


Mechanical Heart Complex

by Saerzion



Category: Fallout 3
Genre: Androids, Bisexual Female Character, Cyborgs, Dark Past, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2015-07-18
Packaged: 2018-01-07 14:42:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 63,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1121058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saerzion/pseuds/Saerzion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A cold and ruthless Lone Wanderer leads a solitary life in Rivet City after a series of ethically questionable decisions compels her to take a second look at what she has become… or what she has always been. Often at odds with the principled and stern Harkness, she comes to terms with the notion that between her and the android, she is the one more suited for a mechanical heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

** Ghost in a Prism **

Her boots plodded along the steel bridge leading to the looming, docked city, all metal structures and creaking walls. The bleak January sky stretched out above her in thick sheets of dark gray clouds. She bore the physical weight of her firearms and power armor, the mental weight of the choices that led her to this point, and the icy mindset that kept her from caring. Fatigue pulled at every muscle in her body as she clenched her teeth and continued dragging herself forward, the promise of a warm hotel bed too enticing to quit now.

In the distance, she spotted a familiar figure clad in the Rivet City security armor, Chinese assault rifle at the ready in his hands. Tension worked its way up her spine, but she proceeded toward him regardless. The events of the past few days—past few weeks, even—had taken their toll, and she needed to hole herself up somewhere safe for a while and let it all sink in. Nothing made sense anymore, and in a world that reviled her for her deeds over the span of five months in the Wasteland, she had reached her limit.

But despite all she'd gone through out here, the threads of her humanity had already begun fraying a long time ago.

x-x-x-x-x

_"If you can hear this, please stop looking for your dad and help stop mine. I changed the door password to my name. If you're hearing this, and if you still care enough to help me, you should remember it. Raine, I… we need you. Please come back."_

_She listened to the repeating message, glazed vision roving over the dusk-colored plains. Dirt flew in gentle gusts over the screen of her Pip-Boy, which mapped the sound waves of Amata Almodovar's voice. She wiped the sweat from her brow with a grimy hand, allowing the nostalgic lilt to distract her from the chaotic thoughts plaguing her. But after a while, the inevitable ache only added to the turmoil._

_Her blue eyes drifted to the outer door of Vault 101, the worn and cracked wood beckoning from a mere thirty yards away. Two and a half months had passed since she'd crossed that threshold, and somehow she found herself back, a good deal smarter and with ten times the firepower. Still, she made no further move toward the entrance. She'd traveled back here on a whim and picked up the distress call, having walked all the way from the Citadel and past the ruins of Megaton to stand in this indecisive spot._

_Wisps of long black hair escaped the messy ponytail and fluttered over her shoulders as she cleared her constricting throat. Both a prison and a home, the Vault lived within her in the form of bitter memories scraping at the back of her skull. The environment that cultivated her upbringing had left a gaping wound in her chest, which festered to a gnawing absence of basic compassion. She dug her nails into the front of her armor toward her sternum, wondering if, upon reentering that Vault, she'd be able to find and retrieve the soul it had stolen._

_Her gaze narrowed as she weighed her options, the scale heavily biased against the perceived wrongs committed by the residents inside. Sneering expressions came to mind, followed by derisive remarks meant to criticize, put down,_ humiliate _her. The corridors echoed with their whispers, bearing thinly veiled scorn for the girl who had never fit in. Her father's status provided the only buffer from outright ridicule, and once he had fled, she'd had little choice but to follow, lest she invite the full force of 101's wrath upon her head._

_Such hardships in such a small community, and she never knew the reason why._

_She took a step forward as Amata's pleading words persisted around her. At one point in time, she would have done anything Amata asked in return for her favor and a chance at having her feelings reciprocated. A foolish wish, which ended in a painful separation. Some others supported her after Amata's rejection, but the Overseer's spiteful sheep outnumbered them. She ultimately withdrew into herself and rode out the storm of her adolescence in cold isolation._

_Until Freddie Gomez came along._

_Her lips fell into a hard line as she tore her sight away from the Vault entrance. Freddie. Words still eluded her whenever she tried to describe the progression of that relationship. It was all a plethora of guilt and desire and… just so much wasted potential. And although a hidden part of her admitted that something there still lingered, the blame locked it away along with the last vestiges of her civility._

_She shut off the radio frequency on her Pip-Boy, features blank to mask the ire churning under the surface. The same place that housed her past suffering now dared to ask for her help, and she would have laughed at the irony if her father's recent death hadn't taken more of her with him. She felt whittled down to nothing, yet everyone from all directions saw her as the answer, like some kind of deus ex machina; a ghost in a prism._

_A vindictive scoff left her mouth as she pivoted on her heel, and she drew her hunting rifle to prepare for the dangers of the encroaching night on her long trek back to the Citadel. The final stages of Project Purity awaited. She had no time to rescue a society that lacked redeeming qualities. Closure, amends… these things held no appeal for her. She'd washed her hands of Vault 101. Those people who drove her out now needed her? Too bad._

_Let them rot._

x-x-x-x-x

She met the security chief's steady look with a steely one as she reached the end of the bridge and came to a halt in front of him, panting from exertion. He appeared as well-groomed as ever, clean-shaven, and with his neat chestnut hair combed to the side. Strict hazel eyes searched her face while his frown deepened, the disapproval in his expression enough to grate on her nerves.

"Raine Sinclair. What brings you back to Rivet City?" he demanded as he lowered the assault rifle.

"A3-21," she drawled, concealing a smirk when he stiffened. "What's with the interrogation? New safety precaution to screen out other suspected SRB members?"

"This is the last time I'm going tell you, kid. Either call me Harkness and stop bringing that up or get the hell off my boat," he snapped, his voice growing gruffer at the mention of the Synth Retention Bureau.

She issued a weary sigh and shifted the heavy pack strapped over her armor. "Relax. I won't say anything in front of other people." Several beats of strained silence went by before she added, "Now move so I can pass out at the Weatherly."

He pinned her with a dubious stare. "Looking to bunk in the hotel, huh? Did your Tenpenny suite lose its flavor or something?"

Raine's gaze went skyward as she fought the urge to shove past him. Her half-healed injuries throbbed under the bandages wrapped by the Brotherhood medics, having been exacerbated during her violent final departure from the Citadel. She'd had enough of the incessant missions, the constant expectations of following others' linear to-do lists. Her agenda now consisted of laying low and recuperating, but of course this troublesome, wary man insisted on making himself an obstacle.

"It's all the way across the map, and I just got back on my feet after making Project Purity a success," she told him tiredly. _So you should be rolling out the red carpet for the person who brought purified water to the Capital Wasteland._

Harkness's jaw tightened. "From what I've heard on the radio, the real hero is an unnamed ghoul who finished the job. Not you."

She swore under her breath. _Goddamn Three Dog._

He studied her for a moment, taking in her bedraggled state. She'd never liked his perpetual analyzing, the way he always breathed down her neck, as if he had wired his own system to track her every move. One incident involving the suicide of a hopeless, elderly man, and Harkness had swooped down on her like a reenactment of the Great War. Despite all the favors she had done for other Rivet City residents, he had targeted her for life.

Even now, several weeks after the fact, he still held onto that grudge. She estimated three minutes tops before her knees gave out and sent her crumpling to the ground in a graceless heap. Patience ebbed and gave way to consternation as a spell of dizziness swept over her.

"Is that what this is about? What, you only let heroes in now?" Raine asked.

Harkness stepped closer, eyeing her harshly. "This is about me making sure you won't be a problem before I let you back into this city," he growled. "Even if you helped with Project Purity, you're on thin ice as it is."

She froze at those last few words, catching the flicker of perplexity cross his features when she pierced him with a fierce glower. _Thin ice_. An image of another man, much younger, filled her vision and dispelled the lethargy in her bones at once. A wave of unwanted emotions followed, breaking free of their bindings to race across her working memory. Grief. Shame. Remorse. These unacknowledged things clawed for recognition, and she forcibly pushed them back, dismissing their existence once again. Tense minutes passed. She drew in a sharp breath, angry, slighted, and just a little uneasy.

No matter the distance or length of time, the Vault still lived within her.

Harkness couldn't have known the can of worms he'd opened with that latter sentence, but he found himself backing up and brandishing his assault rifle when she invaded his personal space.

"You know, I was this close to handing your synthetic ass over to Zimmer," Raine hissed in a low, threatening pitch while jabbing the front of his vest with her index finger. She stood close enough to see the nicks and scars on the skin of his face, every realistic crease and pore that disguised the true construction beneath. "But I didn't. So at least give me that."

He glared down at her, bringing up a hand to shove her away. She staggered and regained her footing, never breaking their eye contact. The temperature plummeted in the space between them, and she witnessed the way he seemed to wrestle with his own prejudice against her. It was a prejudice built on justified ground, but it also gave her little room to prove her willingness to reform. Or, at least, her willingness to keep to herself and steer clear of others.

Finally, Harkness barked, "Am I going to regret letting you in?"

"No."

The single word held the resonating sincerity of an exhausted spirit just wanting to rest. Another few seconds ticked by before he stepped aside and gestured her forward. Although he still appeared unhappy about granting her access, his reservations switched to surprise when she pushed a plasma rifle into his arms as she trudged past. He balanced it over the firearm he already carried, remarking out loud that it had been the one he'd given her a while ago.

"You can have that back, by the way," she declared. "Never felt right carrying a piece of you with me, android."

She made it to the marketplace entrance before he spoke.

"Sinclair," he called, slinging the plasma rifle over his shoulder. "Maybe you should reconsider which of us is the human and which of us is the machine here."

She paused in mid-step, but proceeded inside without answering. No point dwelling on something she already knew.

Her body was flesh, her heart mechanical.


	2. Chapter 2

** Cage of Metal Walls **

"Cap for your thoughts?"

Raine glared at the floor and pressed the cold bottle of Nuka-Cola against her forehead as she sat in a slumped position on the edge of the bed. "…No cap, just kill me."

The amplified ringing of the cash register outside the room sent sheer agony ripping across her head. She squeezed her eyes shut and allowed the blanket to fall from her chest as she brought up her free palm to knead one temple. The Pip-Boy on her wrist weighed more heavily than she remembered. Vera came to sit beside her, already dressed in the prim and proper attire befitting a hotel manager. She placed a hand on Raine's bare shoulder, sliding her fingers over the soft planes of her back.

"Eight shots in a row last night. And I've never even seen you drink before," Vera commented, gently tugging on tendrils of the younger woman's long black hair. "What was the occasion?"

Raine drew away in an abrupt movement and rose to her feet, still clutching the bottle to her pounding cranium. _Just don't ask._ "Whatever it was, I accomplished my goal of forgetting it."

The hot air clung to the film of dried sweat on her skin, piling discomfort on top of the pain. She stumbled around none too gracefully, grabbing her bra and panties from the floor and attempting to slip them on one-handed. When she lost her balance and almost toppled into the metal dresser near the door, Vera stood.

"Here, let me help," she offered, coming forward to take hold of the twisting undergarments.

"Knock it off. I don't need you."

"Sure, just like you don't need me every time you sneak into my quarters with your clothes already halfway off. You've been here two weeks and haven't missed a night jumping into my bed." Vera finished fixing the bra straps and sighed, her warm breath brushing against the nape of Raine's neck. "So… who's Amata?"

Raine tensed, alarm shooting throughout her body. Hearing a name she'd never spoken in Rivet City invoked a bout of apprehension that clutched at her stomach. She turned to regard her lover with suspicion. "How…?"

"That's what you kept calling me last night at the height of your intoxication," Vera stated, frowning.

_Ah, shit._

Lowering the Nuka-Cola bottle and placing it on top of the dresser, Raine pressed her lips together and retrieved the rest of her clothing. She inwardly berated herself as she threw on a black tank top, displeased that her past hovered so close to the surface, ready to spill out the instant her tongue loosened under the influence.

Vera sighed again, crossing her arms. "Look. You've got some baggage, I get it. And you're still young. But I'm at the point in life where I want to settle, Raine. So if you're not intending to commit, this 'arrangement' between us is going to have to stop."

Raine merely peered over at her as she zipped up her jeans. "Letting me down easy? Better than what I've gone through before."

"Sorry, but when it comes down to it, I'm still running a business here."

"Yeah, I get it. I'll start paying for my hotel room." Raine turned away and tied her hair up in a tangled ponytail. The hairstyle added pressure to the hammering in her head, but she did her best to bear with it. Glancing over her shoulder, she added, "At least now Seagrave might stop cutting my wages since I won't be fucking the woman of his dreams anymore."

She paid no heed to Vera's wounded expression as she stepped into and tied her boots. Her vision danced when she straightened, throwing off her gait as she forced herself to trudge to the exit. And upon yanking the door open, she found a short hindrance blocking her path.

"Morning!" Bryan Wilks chirped while grinning up at her.

Raine blinked, wondering how long the kid had been standing there. "Hey," she said shortly and moved around him before he could engage her in unwanted conversation again.

As he repeated the greeting to Vera, she made her unsteady way through the makeshift hotel lobby, where Mister Buckingham hovered behind the front desk. It acknowledged her in a voice identical to Andy's, the Mister Handy unit back in Vault 101. She shook off the familiar internal discord at the resemblance and continued on to the corridor outside. The perpetual sound of groaning metal echoed across the length of the floor, and she clamped her hands over her ears, feeling the reverberations strike her skull.

_Oh my God… I've gone through radiation sickness less painful than this._

Taking a left, she dragged herself toward her room next door and spared a fleeting look at the closed quarters where Dr. Zimmer once resided. Her mouth fell into a hard line at the thought of what might still be lying inside, but she pushed it back, figuring security had already ransacked and cleared out the interior after the android fiasco. She proceeded to her room and staggered in, heading straight for the stash of purified water she kept hidden in her wardrobe.

Vague unrest tugged at her, but she dismissed it as she selected a bottle and took a swig. Project Purity's Aqua Pura line had yet to reach Capital-wide dispersal. Although Rivet City received only limited shipments of it for the time being, Officer Lepelletier did more complaining about the Brotherhood's sabotaged water caravans than actual problem-solving. Raine deemed it better not to trouble herself with the overpriced results of her father's work by simply hoarding the purified water she'd already collected throughout her travels.

Once she finished rehydrating, she tossed the bottle back into the wardrobe and took a moment to stare at the interior, detecting something off. However, the mounting pressure in her cranium sidetracked her, and she shut the wardrobe door, hoping it abated soon. The hangover, coupled with the musty smell of the enclosed city, left her nauseous and more irritable than usual—which, suffice it to say, boded ill for her upcoming work hours.

She took a deep breath and grabbed a worn surgical mask on her way out, gritting her teeth when the door clanged shut behind her. A passing security guard eyed her but said nothing, and she glared back before padding over to the marketplace entrance at the end of the corridor. Her appearance went unnoticed by all except one, and she sensed his attention on her immediately as she tried to adjust her hearing to the typical racket of the hangar deck.

Harkness stood at his post down below near the end of the shops, his jaw hardening when her gaze clashed with his. The customary annoyance welled up, but she cut their staring contest short when her queasiness increased. With some wry amusement, she considered informing him later that the very sight of him made her sick. Mulling over that potential gem of a conversation, she alerted the others to her presence by clomping down the metal staircase.

"Raine," Seagrave Holmes called from the other side of the chain-link fence to her right. He adjusted his bulky motorcycle helmet as he scowled at her. "You realize you're a half hour late for work?"

She sent him a sideways glance and donned the surgical mask while walking over. "As long as I get my workload done, it's not a problem, right?" she returned, voice muffled behind the 3-ply filter.

He shook his head and started grumbling about how her repairing skill was the only reason he put up with her attitude problem. She ignored his disgruntlement and turned the corner to Gary's Galley, where Angela Staley paused in her sweeping to shoot her a frown. Raine strode by without acknowledging the younger girl, detecting her residual resentment over the situation with Diego, who had recently entered the priesthood at Raine's encouragement. Gary Staley observed the exchange from behind the counter of the restaurant, but looked away when her icy blue eyes flashed at him.

The other merchants went about their business in their stalls, having become accustomed to Raine's perplexing employment among them. They sometimes still questioned her decision to settle and work in the city, but she left them to their speculations, feeling no need to explain herself. Of course, that particular mystery didn't sit well with the chief of security, and she grew ruffled at the way he kept watching her as she approached the front of Rivet City Supply.

Seagrave had just finished pushing a heap of broken weapons and armor pieces toward her workstation at the rear of the shop. "Here. I need all these either fixed or discarded by closing," he told her, and then wrinkled his nose as she swept past. "Have you been drinking? You reek of booze."

"Just let me do my job in peace, and I won't puke all over your merchandise," Raine replied, plopping down on a tattered trunk set up against the fence. "My goddamn head feels like it's splitting open."

"Jesus, did Vera at least give you something to help with that hangover?"

"Not like she's my girlfriend, so no." Raine sneered up at him from behind the mask. "She's not my _anything_ starting today, so now's your chance to give it another shot. Hell, maybe she'll go straight this time around."

Seagrave flushed at the taunt, but disappointed her by not rising to her bait. After a second of silence, he pivoted on his heel without a word and took his seat at the front counter, switching on the radio next to his own repair project. Raine scoffed at the man's passive nature and reached for a dented combat helmet in her pile. The atmosphere improved a bit over the next few minutes as she hammered the damaged item back into top shape, pausing only when her headache spiked to excruciating levels. The lilting music drifting from the radio helped to distract her from the pain, and soon she fell into the autonomous rhythm of hammering, sharpening, and buffing.

She preferred fixing electronics over firearms and equipment, but the work was satisfying enough. And when left to her own devices, she didn't mind the marketplace environment. Several conversations floated from the other stores, and the aroma of Gary's latest mysterious concoction wafted over from the restaurant. Although she tended to segregate herself from everyone else, the quiet community provided a welcome contrast from the harsh life out in the Wasteland. However, at the same time, many physical features of the city brought about a tangible, stinging sort of nostalgia.

Raine glanced up from her tinkering to scan the premises. Metal surfaces and unfiltered lighting. She likened it to a dilapidated version of Vault 101, where the absence of working Vault technology resulted in a much darker and eroded setting. The corridors especially struck home in the similarities, forming a cage around her; one of metal walls. And yet, even after spending half a month here, she hadn't moved on.

The reason existed. She just never put it into words.

Her vision roamed over the area and away from the glaring lights, only to once again settle on Harkness's overbearing form a few meters from the front of the shop. He had shifted his attention to Lana Danvers, his second-in-command. Raine studied the professionalism and easy friendship between the two as they conversed, noting the rare ease of his posture. Considering how stiff he appeared whenever he followed her around the decks under the pretense of "standard patrolling," she'd thought him incapable of relaxing.

His constant vigilance both irritated and baffled her, and she pounded the combat shotgun on her workbench harder than necessary as she resumed her work. Come to think of it, she could barely take a piss without emerging from the communal bathrooms to find him standing near the entrance, as if that were completely normal. His fixation on her had begun to chafe, as did his obvious expectation to catch her doing something illegal. Granted, she did have a less-than-stellar reputation around the Wasteland (to say the least), but Harkness was fishing for any excuse to throw her out of the city. He could disguise his true intentions as much as he wanted; she saw right through him with every step he took on her shadow.

The sudden rattling of the chain-link fence at her back jolted her out of her musings.

"Haha, jumpy, aren't you, dyke?" Trinnie's simpering voice chortled from behind her. "What, did you think it was a big bad penis coming after you? Isn't that, like, a rug-muncher's greatest fear or something?"

Raine didn't bother turning around as she reassembled the shotgun. "Actually, my greatest fear is the idea of having to 'munch' a ruined 'rug' like yours. So how about you take that diseased, gaping vortex and scram?"

A few stunned beats went by before Trinnie sputtered, "The fuck did you just say, bitch? You sure talk tough for some Vault wimp that needs to wear a mask to protect your delicate, pampered lungs from all the deck rust."

"Hey," Seagrave cut in, sending both young women sharp looks, "I need Raine to concentrate on repairs, so you two will have to put off your catfight till later."

Trinnie snorted, but eventually moved away from the fence, muttering, "Whatever. Vaultie skank."

Raine cursed the unsavory interruption as her headache worsened. Dealing with the Muddy Rudder's hairstyle-challenged junkie and part-time hooker grated on her nerves on a good day. Doing so during her first ever hangover incited outright murderous aspirations. She shoved the encounter from her mind and focused on her task, deciding she'd daydream about Trinnie's demise later.

Once she managed to complete the shotgun assembly, she examined a series of nicks on the stock that had initially been overlooked. They dotted the material in a manner she'd come to recognize, as she had purchased enough weapons from one of its merchants to notice the pattern. Holding it up, she leaned around the grimy divider that separated the supply store from Flak 'N Shrapnel's.

"This combat shotgun belong to you boys?"

Shrapnel appeared almost at once, snatching the firearm from her hands and inspecting it. His weathered forehead creased under his shaggy hair as he demanded, "You seriously brought this thing back from the dead?"

"Weapon resurrection is my superpower," she responded in a dry tone, her eyes wandering down to the knife strapped to his belt. For a dull old blade, it still carved some hefty nicks whenever he went into one of his restless spells.

Flak came up behind him, seeming more impressed as he stroked his mustache. "I coulda sworn this one was done for. Never shot right, no matter how many times I cleaned it out."

"The problem was pitting. Interior of the barrel was corroded to hell, so I polished it up for you. It should work fine now," Raine declared.

While Shrapnel peered at her harshly—which he did with everyone except his business partner—Flak took the shotgun and nodded at her.

"Well thanks, kid. It's much appreciated."

"Yep."

She returned to her station, already set to embark on her next task. It figured that the people she had fewest issues with were the two grizzled men with shady pasts. Rough around the edges, but she appreciated their relative disinterest in her Wasteland dealings and relocation to Rivet City.

The next few hours crawled by at an agonizing pace. As soon as Raine had reached the last object in her pile, Seagrave—with utmost glee—scooted a crate full of additional repair jobs toward her feet. She glowered at the back of his head as she worked on a rusted missile launcher, imagining the irony of taking him out with it once she had it in pristine condition. Exhaustion now weighed down her limbs, and she wanted nothing more than to crash on her bed and sleep the afternoon away.

Meanwhile, Harkness had stopped by numerous times during his rounds. Raine played oblivious whenever he walked up to Seagrave to inquire about business or current affairs, but the tension in her frame increased with each occurrence. His eyes never strayed far from her, and the borderline harassment prodded her to second-guess her decision to eliminate Zimmer for him. A vein twitched in her forehead as her thoughts wandered again to the Institute scientist's old room.

However, the program on the radio caught her attention when a familiar drawl erupted from the speakers.

"Hey everybody, this is Three Dog! And you're listening to Galaxy News Radio," the disc jockey announced in his usual boisterous fashion.

Raine exhaled in aggravation. _Lord, here we go… the man who loves hearing himself talk…_

"So, it's been a while, but some of you may be wondering: What ever happened to that stone-cold Lone Wanderer from Vault 101?"

She froze, hammer in midair.

"Last we heard, she was heading toward the southeast. But to tell you the truth, she's pretty much disappeared. And for those of you who've been living under rocks and have no clue who I'm talking about, all you need to know is that there isn't a more confusing girl in the history of the country."

Raine slowly lowered her arm as he went on.

"She might have contributed some good to the Wasteland through her involvement with Project Purity, but let's not forget all the shit she's pulled since August last year," Three Dog stated with clear condemnation. "Blew up a town of innocent people, helped a group of hostile ghouls take over a residential tower, singlehandedly killed off a lawful vigilante organization, wiped out an independent republic, infiltrated and evicted a community of children from their safe haven, and, most recently, tapped out of the Brotherhood of Steel when they needed help transporting clean water. Sheesh, talk about a fucking chip on the shoulder. I don't know how the world had done her wrong any more than the rest of us, but she was a crazy-ass force to be reckoned with."

Her knuckles went white as her grip around the hammer tightened. Everyone else had tuned in on the radio program as well, and their cautious glances in her direction only fueled the simmering in her blood.

"Then there are the arguably heroic things she's done, though they're few and far between. But let's get real. They don't excuse her wrongdoings. Maybe she realized that and left the Capital. Maybe karma finally caught up to her and killed her off. Either way, good riddance, 101. If you're gone, you may be remembered, but you won't be missed. You've caused far too much suffering. Do you even know the meaning of the word?"

A crash startled several people in the next instant. The radio lay malfunctioning on the floor beyond the store's front counter, sparks flying from the hammer embedded in its center. Raine retracted the hand that threw the tool, unapologetic even when Seagrave whirled around, his features scrunched in accusation.

"I can fix it," she told him before he opened his mouth. "I've built radios before. I know them in and out."

"Raine," he rumbled, frowning deeply at her. "I think you're done here. Just go."

She bristled. "What, so you're firing me?"

"Ms. Sinclair," Harkness interjected, already stomping over. "Don't make a scene. Go on and clear out of this deck. Now."

Raine lifted her hands in a compliant gesture, but pinned him with a fierce glare. "All right. Whatever."

The stares pressed in on her from all sides as she marched toward the main exit, shoving roughly against Harkness's shoulder on purpose along the way. Her pulse thundered with anger potent enough to drown out all other aches in her body, and she yanked off the surgical mask as she kicked the heavy door open and stepped outside. The mid-afternoon sun assaulted her retinas, but she slammed the metal construct shut behind her as a gust of wind blew past, carrying with it the scent of the Wasteland and the reminder of what awaited her out there.

She brushed back the strands of black hair that fluttered across her face, taking a breather as she struggled to contain her malice. Fine, she deserved that. She deserved all the antagonism she had sown. But there was another side. There was always another side to the story. It burned within her, struggling for release. Only, by this point, she wondered if it even mattered.

In the distance across the ramp, the water caravan post sat empty. Raine averted her gaze and entered the stairwell to the right. Her choices, her penalties. She understood the consequences, but she still felt the need to defend herself. Although, those defenses admittedly rang hollow since she never presented any context. But would context justify anything? Would anyone care?

She hovered at the base of the stairs leading to the upper deck, recalling Vera's puzzlement at the occasion calling for her to drink. Raine had already decided there wouldn't be a repeat experience, but the damage it had done to her rocky standing only made the downhill progression of this day more fitting.

One year ago today, Freddie Gomez had asked her a question that set something in motion.

_"Would you be my girlfriend?"_

Raine peered around the stairwell, seeing nothing but the phantom traces of the Vault.

There was a reason she had chosen this cage of metal walls.


	3. Chapter 3

** Welcome to Reality **

_The sight of her new workroom struck her with a sinking realization as she stared at several years' worth of damaged radio parts strewn all over the floor and counters. An old toolkit balanced atop one heap of dials and bent antennae, right next to a stained and wrinkled utility jumpsuit that looked like it hadn't been washed in decades. The malfunctioning lights buzzed in continuous flickers, casting their on and off glow over the decrepit jukebox that sat against the far wall._

_Raine whirled on Amata, who stood at the doorway, avoiding her eyes. "What the hell is this? Mr. Brotch said my G.O.A.T. scores placed me on the engineering track. I'm supposed to be working on the Vault's electrical grid, but now you're telling me I'm going to be a jukebox technician instead?"_

_"Look, I'm sorry. My father wanted to reassign you as a garbage burner, of all things. This was the best I could negotiate for you," Amata replied, almost pleading. "But also, this location is pretty secluded and safe. No one will be able to bother you down here."_

_Those latter statements hit Raine like a slap to the face, and she advanced on the shorter girl until they stood inches apart. "I've dealt with everyone giving me hell all this time. You know I can hold my own. I don't need to be tucked away like some kind of dirty secret. Let me talk to your dad, and I'll sort it out with him."_

_"No. He'll probably have you shot if you go even ten feet of his office. After he found out about us…" Amata trailed off and cleared her throat. "Listen, just accept this position for now. Down the road, I can try reasoning with him again."_

_Raine's gaze grew stony as she reached out with a bandaged hand. "Will he listen to reason?" she asked quietly, backing Amata into the edge of the doorframe. Her thumb brushed over the other's lower lip in a gesture that spoke of familiarity and longing. "Will you?"_

_Amata pushed her arm away, mindful of her injury. "Cut it out. You're dating Freddie now, right?"_

_"Yeah, so?"_

_"He's crazy about you. He told me he tried to come to your defense when my father sent Officer Mack to beat you. You should treat Freddie better—"_

_"Hold on, what?" Raine interrupted with rising ire. She clenched her fractured knuckles, heedless of the pain. "Your dad was responsible for this? He was the one behind Stevie assaulting me?"_

_Amata sighed wearily, appearing displeased with herself for saying too much. "Yes, in retaliation for getting involved with me. I don't know why he's always had it out for you, Raine. I'm doing what I can to buffer you against him. That includes getting you this job."_

_The air shifted as Raine shoved off from the doorframe and kicked the nearest pile of radio components. "This is fucking bullshit."_

_"I know, and I wish it wasn't this way, but the Overseer runs the show. You'll have to keep fighting. It's just how things are."_

_Raine watched as Amata took a few desolate steps out and then hesitated. When she turned back, her expression revealed something far worse than pity. It seared into Raine's occipital lobe, wiring itself into an unspoken mantra that slunk around her conscious._

_Hopelessness._

_"Welcome to reality. It's you against the Vault."_

Raine woke with a start, breathing heavily as a dull ache spread across the joints of her long-healed hand. She sat up on the lumpy mattress and cracked her knuckles in an attempt to dispel the reminder of the past. Her Pip-Boy's interface exuded a green glow that cut through the darkness of her room, but the memories still lurked in the shadows, beckoning and whispering in distant, haunting echoes.

She hated sleeping alone.

x-x-x-x-x

Without work to occupy her time or a lover to keep her distracted, she spent the day wandering around the city, seeking a task to stay productive. The search proved fruitless, but unsurprising; hardly anyone was willing to associate with her on a personal level, much less a professional one. After losing count of the number of rejections she received for jobs requiring any degree of customer service, she meandered aimlessly through the corridors, maintaining steadfast indifference to her circumstances.

Even so, the lack of activity invited the onset of trouble.

The remnants of the dream, the memory, pursued her at every turn. They loomed from the corners to haunt her, dwelled in the ground to swallow her. All attempts to face them led to reliving other events, ones she had locked deep inside in order to preserve what remained of her sanity. And for all the outward apathy she showed the world, she still faltered at the prospect of confronting her own demons.

They followed her now as she ascended the stairwell, nipping at her heels with each reverberating step on the rusty stairs. A flurry of images and sounds flooded her head to prove what she'd always tried to ignore. Although she had never returned to the Vault, she had never escaped it, either. In reality she wandered free, but in the silence she was trapped within herself. The dysphoria tore into her at every idle moment, forcing her to reconsider the wisdom of subjecting herself to this cage.

_I… need some air._

She made her way to the level that housed the flight deck, the hush of the space broken by the maintenance tools clanging together on her belt. Harkness's unusual absence from her trail was a welcome respite, but given the ongoing turmoil in her head, peace still eluded her. She struggled to shake it off upon reaching the bridge tower, and only after taking several paces toward the nearest exit did she register the commotion coming from the direction of the armory.

A hulking figure stumbled down the steps to the left, swearing as an indignant Mister Gutsy unit hovered above him.

"Sir, I'm sorry, but I'll have to shoot you next time you enter this unauthorized area, sir!" Private Jones declared before drifting back to his post upstairs.

The trespasser dusted himself off and snarled a stream of profanity under his breath until he noticed Raine standing there, giving him a blank look. His expression switched from incensed to interested, and he smoothed down his cropped black hair as he sauntered over to her. She watched him approach, identifying him as the sketchy slaver she had avoided speaking to during her previous stays in the city. The smell of cigarette smoke and stale sweat surrounded her when he stood too close for comfort, and she let out an exaggerated cough before waving at the air between them.

"Either take a shower or don't come near me," she snapped, attempting to walk past him.

His hand shot out to grip her elbow. "Hold on, don't be like that. I just want to talk to you for a minute," he drawled in a deep, suggestive voice.

She yanked her limb out of his grasp and clutched the hammer hanging at her hip. "Who are you again?"

Annoyance flashed across his brutish features. "Sister."

"…Okay."

"Don't ask. Anyway," he continued, leering at her, "I'm glad I ran into you. Word is you're so hated across the Wasteland that you make me look like a saint, but that's exactly the kind of girl I'm looking for. And it's a bonus that you're easy on the eyes." He cursed when she swatted away the fingers he brushed against her cheekbone. "Feisty, too."

"Right. Well, I'm gonna go now if you're finished making an ass of yourself," Raine said, skirting around him. _I've got enough on my mind without this sleaze adding to the pile. And what the hell is with his name, anyway?_

"Seriously, wait," he called when she was halfway to the door. "I got some work I could use some help with."

She paused at the keyword against her better judgment. Of the people she considered slightly less savage than deathclaws, Sister didn't even make that list. Still, desperation had a way with persuasion. Turning back, she asked, "Work?"

A smirk lifted one corner of his mouth. "That's more like it. Heard Seagrave cut you loose yesterday, but you've got a reputation as a damn good tinkerer. Wonder how else you're good with your hands…"

"If you've got a job to pitch to me, spit it out."

"Down, girl. Goddamn." He glanced behind him and lowered his voice. "That fucking robot up there. Guarding the armory. Think you could shut it down for me?"

Raine frowned, already disliking where this was going. "And why would I want to do that?"

"I'm thinking of taking up my… _profession_ again, now that people are getting all lax while raving about clean water imports. Perfect time to strike," Sister told her, sneering. "But to do that, I need the guns that asshole security chief confiscated from me. He took some of your weapons, too, didn't he?"

She thought about the larger firearms Harkness had sequestered in return for allowing her to reside indefinitely in Rivet City. "I can live without them."

"Yeah, right. After all the stories about your exploits and shit, you've gotta be missing those bad boys," Sister insisted as he once again imposed on her personal space. "C'mon, no one's up in the security quarters right now. Just use one of those wrenches you're wearing and take Jones out. It's already got a faulty processor. An electronics whiz like you could disable it in less than a minute."

Raine pressed a palm against his chest to prevent him from inching closer. "Jones is malfunctioning?"

"Yeah. The thing's easily confused and does a shitty job watching its station, but somehow it still catches me when I try to get in."

She contemplated that for a few moments, but shook her head. "I'll pass. You want to start slapping slave collars on people, you figure out the details yourself. I'm done with that kind of trouble."

Sister seized her forearms and squeezed hard, abandoning all pretense of pleasantry as he pierced her with a dark glower. She glared back at him in outrage and tried to break his hold, but when pitted against his physical strength, she couldn't free herself without making a racket. He pinned her arms down by her sides and pulled her toward him even as she leaned away in disgust.

"Don't give me that bullshit, bitch," he growled, bending forward so that his hot breath washed over her cheek. "I know what it's like getting all comfy someplace when you think you're through with the shit you used to do, but it never leaves you. It's always there in the back of your mind, telling you that you're not like everyone else, that you'll never _be_ like anyone else. You know this, too, right? You and me, we're the same."

A surge of rage erupted in response to his statements, manifesting in a sickening _crack_ as Raine reared back and slammed her head against his in a powerful head-butt. He howled and released her at once, and she barely felt the pain in her forehead as she snatched her hammer from her belt. However, instead of attacking, she stood shaking on the spot, wanting to gouge out the words that had lodged into her brain.

_Don't even try to act like you get me. You don't have a fucking clue._

"Fuck, I think you broke my nose, you cunt!" Sister yelled as blood flowed over his hands and the lower half of his face.

"That's not all I'll break if you ever touch me again," she shot back, punctuating each syllable with a wave of the hammer. "Now get lost, and I'll pretend this never happened."

His murderous countenance implied that he would rather pummel her to the ground, but the clamor of voices coming up the stairwell seemed to change his mind. With a malicious scowl that promised future retaliation, he spun on his heel and fled through the west door to the flight deck. Raine replaced the hammer on her belt and, on numb legs, forced herself up the stairs to the next level of the bridge tower, hoping to avoid whoever emerged from the stairwell. Her heart raced in an erratic tempo as she reached the top and pressed her back against one wall across from the armory.

Private Jones patrolled the sealed arsenal without acknowledging her presence. As her blood pressure returned to normal, she observed the possible glitches in its system, noting the weak propulsion jets and detection function. Although she still fumed at Sister's words and manhandling, she realized he had been correct about the ease of breaking into the armory if one had enough skill. Tempting, she admitted. A simple alteration of Jones's wires, and any disgruntled soul would have substantial firepower at their disposal. In the event that someone sought to wreak havoc across Rivet City…

She cast a quick glance around the security force's common area, but instantly stiffened at the mention of her name down below.

"Raine needs to just get the hell out," a familiar snotty tone griped. "Seriously, every jackass in the city has been twice as uptight ever since she got here. No one fucking likes her. You hate her, too, right, C.J.?"

"Well, she does make me nervous," came the little girl's hesitant reply. "She doesn't really talk, and Harkness looks mad whenever he's watching her."

Raine raised an eyebrow and sidled back down a few steps without revealing herself, crossing her arms as she continued listening in. Half the time, she'd forgotten that kids existed on this boat. Having spent her formative years in an enclosed environment where worrying about survival ranked low on a child's list of priorities, she had stopped distinguishing children in the Wasteland from the adults. Catching these kids badmouthing her in juvenile disdain, however, was more entertaining than anything. Especially the bratty James Hargrave, who was basically the miniature doppelganger of someone else she had grown up with.

"What do you mean she doesn't really talk? Remember what she said to me a few months ago? She told me my dad might've been eaten by some cannibals at this place called Andale or some shit," James seethed. "What kind of bitch tells a kid that? Screw her. I hope the rumors about people wanting to get rid of her are true."

_Those aren't rumors, kid._

"Hey, come on. She's all right in my book," a third voice piped up. "She helped me out in Grayditch and even brought me here when she didn't have to."

Raine tensed, a little put off by the uncustomary praise.

"Man, shut up, Bryan. She your girlfriend or something? What made you so special that you're the only one she hasn't treated like crap?" James demanded.

"I dunno. Maybe she felt bad for me since I lost my dad to the giant ants," Bryan replied. "I still don't know her reasons for doing the things she does, but to me, she's not a bad person."

"You're full of it. She's a worthless wreck with nothin' but crime to her name. Back me up, C.J."

"Oh, um…"

"No," Bryan interrupted. "I think she's just lonely. Sometimes lonely people don't know what to do with themselves."

Raine could made out their progression across the lower level, and she prepared to move when they neared the stairs, but they stopped at the base.

"What the hell are you even going on about?" James snarled. "She's a psycho, a murderer. She could snap any moment and kill us all. I bet she's just biding her time."

"Okay, now you're just spouting off BS," Bryan countered, now sounding angry. "She's not a psycho, she was probably just dealt some bad cards in life. Maybe something happened to make her this way."

Raine's brow furrowed as the sound of a door opening accompanied James's vehement argument. A second later, the door swung shut to heavy silence. She found the kids' opinions of her hardly enlightening, but she could admit that Bryan's insightful comments about her motives were impressive for his age. Even though she'd never made her choices with the intention of building her own infamy, she had grown accustomed to the social repercussions. And hearing someone come to her defense, especially a child she barely knew, was jarring in a sense.

She rested the back of her head against the metal surface of the wall, lost in her thoughts until the Mister Gutsy finally noticed her and zoomed over.

"Sir, I need you to state your business here, sir!" Jones proclaimed.

She stared at the robot in silent analysis, estimating the success rate of overriding and even hijacking its primary objective. Her gaze flickered to the room under its protection, where her Gatling laser and other big guns had been locked away.

_"She's not a bad person."_

Raine reached for the tools on her belt and advanced on Jones. _Not a bad person, huh? I guess we'll see._

In the end, Sister did get one thing right. The shadow of the past always lurked in the background, whispering enticing sentiments about the deeds one had done. She had never apologized, never experienced remorse for distributing justified reprisal.

Because when someone has lost all hope, the only thing they can do is strike back.

_Welcome to reality. It's you against the world._


	4. Chapter 4

** Incomputable Enigma **

Harkness frowned as the tardy water caravan marched across the bridge toward the city entrance behind him. He counted the crates of Aqua Pura strapped to the brahmin walking alongside several armored Brotherhood members, noting that this week's shipment numbered a third less than usual. Their clanging footsteps all but drowned out Lana Danvers's barked orders to set up in the old science lab, and she exchanged a vexed look with him while the escort detail filed inside. Officer Lepelletier brought up the rear of the line and maintained her scowl as she strode over to report in.

"More hijackings, Chief. I don't know what else to tell you," she huffed, shrugging her shoulders. "I was dead serious when I said I needed more personnel to guard the caravans. The Brotherhood can't spare any more from their ranks, so it has to be from ours."

"And you know we're already spread thin enough as it is," Harkness replied. He shook his head and shifted the Chinese assault rifle at his back. "I'll figure something out. Some of our residents are under the weather, and they're counting on this water supply."

"Yeah, well, hopefully they're not holding their breath because our shipments are just going to keep dwindling unless we shut down the source of these attacks," Lepelletier said irately and crossed her arms, glaring off into the distance.

He analyzed the contrast between her tense posture and the anxious way she bit her lip. As his processes detected the steady elevation of her blood pressure, he demanded, "Do you know something?"

Lepelletier glanced back at him. "No, nothing for certain, but I've got a strong feeling that something organized is going on. Think about it. Since when are common bandits so on par with trained combative professionals that they manage to consistently fuck up our operations?"

"You have a point there," Harkness told her, although he knew assembling and deploying an investigative team was out of the question for now. He rubbed his forehead and, not for the first time, asked himself why he refused to resign from this migraine-inducing position. "Well, I'll give the caravan issue more consideration—"

"Please do."

"—and I'll get back to you once I draft together a POA."

Lepelletier let out a long-suffering sigh and moved toward the marketplace door, through which the last of the detail disappeared. "Try not to take too long, Chief. I'm almost at the end of my rope here."

Danvers passed her on the way over and issued a short greeting before coming to stand at his side. His second-in-command raked her fingers through her short brown hair, the lines in her face deep with stress. "This really is a major problem, Harkness. We need clean water now more than ever with all these people coming down with some kind of bug. Dr. Preston has been working overtime after the most recent influx of patients. And we need to look into why the outbreak originated in the upper deck."

He nodded, moving the matter up on his priority list through a series of internal numbers and computations. "Yeah, I hear you. I'll start working on a solution this evening after my rounds."

She peered sideways at him, tensing slightly. "You know, I've been meaning to talk to you about the security force's new shift schedule. Is there a reason you have so many of us on constant patrol around the city? With a little restructuring, you could give Lepelletier the manpower she needs and still have an adequate defensive team stationed around our perimeter."

Harkness pressed his lips together as he quelled the sudden stream of informational output from his computerized side, which listed the exact calculations for his rationale. A glower formed on his face when the zeroes and ones assembled an image of a specific individual. Much like a nagging thought, it persisted in his mind no matter how many times he tried to mentally tab out.

"I can't risk it," he declared in a gruff voice. "It's not just the perimeter of the city that needs watching right now."

Danvers stepped in front of him, her dark brown eyes boring into his. "This is about Raine Sinclair, isn't it?"

His lack of response spoke for itself.

"You've been treating that girl like a walking time bomb ever since she moved here, at the cost of the security force's efficiency," Danvers chastised as she fixed him with a stern glare. "Let her be, Harkness. She was making an honest contribution to the community before you and Seagrave drove her out of the marketplace. I really don't think she's looking for trouble on your precious boat, and your paranoia is crippling our productive potential."

While he grasped the validity of her statements, his less logical side felt the need to argue. "Have you forgotten everything she's done in Rivet City alone? Mr. Lopez is dead because of her, and James Hargrave and C.J. Young could've been killed when she drove them into running away. I'm not letting a person like that live unsupervised in this city."

"Yet you allow others like Flak, Shrapnel, Sister, and Trinnie to reside here without harassment," she countered. "You've been singling Raine out, and you're letting her presence affect your work decisions."

He bristled with indignation. The fact that the source of his daily headache went from caravan hijackings to Raine Sinclair hardly surprised him, but it only proved she was a legitimate concern requiring his attention. "Look, as the security chief, it's my job to pinpoint and monitor the most hi-risk citizens, all right? At this time, she fits the bill. I need my personnel to keep an eye on her as a precaution."

Danvers's displeased expression became more pronounced. "I understand your apprehension when you consider her history, but you're devoting too much of our focus on something that may not even be an issue when we're facing a very real issue right here." She gestured to Lepelletier's makeshift office at the gangplank building across the bridge. "People are sick, and they need water. We can't lose any more shipments, Harkness. At least consider switching some of the officers to rotational duty under Lepelletier's command."

He paused at the reasonable suggestion, which both challenged his stubborn mindset and lined up with the logic in his coding. Of course she was right, and literally part of him was inclined to agree. Even so, it took a few minutes before he worked through the inner struggle and exhaled in resignation.

"Fine, I'll see to that when I sit down and revise the personnel assignments tonight," he relented. Despite the number of times they clashed over work-related affairs, he tended to place significant value on her input. "But if you want to get started on it this afternoon and show me what you come up with once I'm finished with my rounds, that's an option, too."

Finally, a satisfied smile broke through her dour countenance. "I'll do that. Good to know you still listen to my advice."

"It's a habit."

"Bet you're glad you keep me around as your sidekick."

"Nope. I hate it when you're more sensible than I am."

They approached the stairwell entrance together as the sun hit high noon. Before opening the heavy metal door, however, Danvers sent him a peculiar stare.

"By the way, I'm kind of taken aback by your hostility toward Raine lately," she remarked, quirking an eyebrow. "Weren't you singing a different tune the last time she stayed in the city?"

Harkness peered back at her, puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"Well, after whatever altercation that was with that Zimmer guy, you just seemed like you changed your opinion of her, at least for a short time," Danvers reminded him. "What was it you said? That she was an unfathomable riddle? If I didn't know any better, I'd say she fascinates you more than anything."

Harkness followed her inside, but declined to answer. His memory bank pulled up a clear reference of the instance, and he scrolled through the successive events as Danvers bid him good bye and split off in another direction. He recalled his sheer astonishment when Raine had decided against betraying him to Zimmer, remembering the overload of questions and speculations that had wracked his system, only for her to refuse him a reason. As much as he'd wanted to assign ulterior motives to her choice, he suspected that even she had no clue why she did the things she did.

He'd spent more hours than he cared to admit mulling over the potential workings of her mind, eventually reverting back to his initial unfavorable opinion when he determined her too perplexing, too… illogical. All attempts to analyze her resulted only in errors across his cortex, leaving him with inadequate conclusions about her motives. She had proven to be an incomputable enigma. A conundrum too multifaceted for science to solve. An outlier among the masses of society.

And somehow, despite the volatile nature that made her so dangerous, everything about her seemed so familiar.

He reached the common area of the security quarters, crossing the vacant floor toward his office. The automated lights flickered on once he unlocked the door, and he grimaced at the mountainous stacks of clipboards and papers littering the surface of his desk. No amount of nagging from Danvers had motivated him to willingly sort through the documents, but now that some actual deskwork loomed in his near future, he foresaw an evening of tedious organization to look forward to.

Proceeding past the clutter, he strode to the set of dented lockers leaning against the far wall and opened the single intact one. Spare holsters, batons, and knives met his sight, but his eyes went straight to the plasma rifle sitting at the back, his mouth hardening into a straight line as he took a moment to study the returned gift. The immaculate condition of the weapon implied good upkeep and care, but judging by the look on Raine's face when she'd shoved it back at him, she had likely repaired it once and then tossed it in storage somewhere during her travels.

Harkness scowled to himself and switched out his current firearm for the plasma rifle. No use letting it waste away just to avoid thinking about how it had been unwanted. Several microfusion cells went into his pocket, followed by a switchblade and two pairs of handcuffs.

When monitoring Raine Sinclair, one could never be too cautious.

He shut the locker and paused to tap into his built-in tracking matrix. While he considered it one positive aspect of recovering his memories, the matrix's capabilities were limited enough to render it useful only within certain distances. The re-mastery of all his android functions had been a quick process, but after living as a human for so long, the dual components of his psyche still caused a bit of cognitive dissonance. Many features of his system ran automatically in the background while he went about his day-to-day activities, and the fluidity with which he alternated between the two facets sometimes became disconcerting.

A small alert flagged his attention when he managed to locate his target on the digital grid pulled up across his vision. In all honesty, the orange indicator on the next floor could have been any living organism, but upon zooming in on it, he knew that body mass, that internal temperature, and that resting heart rate. He'd memorized her vitals, learned her subtly unusual physical processes, knew her inside and out except for what went on in that unpredictable mind.

And he intended to find out what she was up to now in front of the armory.

Hastily, he exited his office and locked up before making his way toward the stairs that led to the upper level of the security quarters. On cue, a loud clattering noise drifted down to raise his caution, and he drew the plasma rifle as he climbed the steps two at a time. Anticipation heightened his senses, preparing him for a range of possible confrontations.

"Private Jones?" Harkness called as he reached the top and rounded the corner. "Is everything—"

He halted in his tracks at the sight of the slumped Mister Gutsy, which lay in a mangled heap on the floor behind an individual whose back was to him. A small but callused hand picked up a wrench and banged it against one of Jones's open hatches, sending several fragments of material flying left and right from the robot's body. Her long black hair spilled over her shoulders, and she brushed it back with an impatient flick of her wrist as she worked. Searing anger curled around Harkness's center when everything in his charts pointed to the blatant intentions of the troublemaking girl.

"Sinclair," he growled, lifting the plasma rifle and aiming it at her head. "So you've finally made your move."

Although she didn't bother turning around, he sensed the subtle jolt in her pulse. _Trying to break into the goddamn armory. I should've known. Danvers, you were completely wrong about her. She's trouble through and through, and now she's crossed the line._

"Stop what you're doing, drop everything you're holding, and stand up," Harkness ordered, on guard as he approached her.

Raine merely glanced at him from over her shoulder without ceasing her abuse on the Mister Gutsy unit. "Give me a minute. I'm not finished."

Her audacity was so absurd that it almost coaxed a laugh from his throat. _As if I'm going to let you finish destroying security force property and retrieve your guns._

"I'm not saying it again. On your feet or I'm taking you down. You've got guts deactivating Jones and going for the armory," he rumbled, his finger applying the slightest pressure on the trigger. "Letting you into this city was a mistake. I'm not making a second one by letting you walk free from this."

Her manner remained calm as she continued to ignore his commands. From an objective standpoint, her courage and nerve in the face of imminent injury and death impressed him. But given the complete depletion of his tolerance, he edged closer, ready to shoot her if she failed to comply.

Suddenly, she snapped Jones's hatch back into place, straightened, and stepped aside. Before Harkness could say anything else, the Mister Gutsy shot up with a sharp whirring sound, spinning around on the spot and rotating its arms. Once it stilled again, it hovered in front of the armory door more steadily than he'd ever seen it, the propulsion jets quieting down to a smooth hum.

"Reactivation complete. All systems at full efficiency. Private Jones resuming this post," it proclaimed.

Harkness hesitated at the clearer intonation of the robot's vocal speakers, and he furrowed his brow at the difference in its performance as Raine bent down to retrieve her tool belt.

"He should be working fine now," she declared, face devoid of emotion as she fastened the belt around her waist. Steely blue irises swung to Harkness, drawing his gaze into their inscrutable depths. "I found out he was malfunctioning, so I fixed his processor and removed the rusted sections around his wires. Nothing unauthorized will get past him now. You can look him over if you're still skeptical."

The security chief stood immobile even when she sauntered toward him, her collected expression unchanging as she came close enough for the barrel of his rifle to bump against her chest. Then, in a startling move, she reached up and slowly pulled down the neckline of her tank top. He watched in mild alarm and opened his mouth to berate her, but the words died on his tongue when she exposed the scarred skin of her modest cleavage. His eyes widened and locked onto the healed red gashes crisscrossing over her sternum and breasts, his wrath completely dissipating at the way she placed her heart right in the impending line of fire.

"So either shoot or let me leave," Raine said in a voice so monotone and unfeeling that he wondered how she even qualified as a living human.

Harkness's jaw tightened, and he forced himself to look away, trying to dismiss how quickly he had jumped to conclusions. A new series of valuables entered his endless calculations, but he pushed them aside as he regarded her. Everything in her countenance hinted that she cared nothing for recognition or for mercy, and the indifference in her demeanor only confused him tenfold. When it came to Raine Sinclair, it didn't matter whether he was human, android, or both.

No sentient being in this world would ever comprehend that incomputable enigma.

After a few seconds, he withdrew the plasma rifle.

She released her shirt and walked past him without a word, the last glimpse of her face telling him his reaction hardly surprised her. However, his thoughts gave him no time to dwell on her reasons for repairing Jones, filling his brain instead with the permanent image of the lacerations on her body. He knew almost every type of scar and injury gained from combat, and hers fell into neither category. Whatever story lurked behind them, their infliction had been intentional.

He stared after her as she bounded down the stairs, his fixation shifting to something else entirely.


	5. Chapter 5

** A Burden Unspoken **

_A flood of fluorescent light greeted her when she dragged herself into the apartment, weary beyond her mind. The late hour blinked on the digital clock mounted at the far side of the living room, and she shook her head in irate disbelief as she dropped her tool belt on the floor. Unrolling the sleeves of her grimy utility jumpsuit, she turned toward the hallway to head for the shower, but stopped when her sight fell upon the kitchen._

_"Dad," she remarked in surprise, spotting her father's slouched form nodding off at the small dining table, a steaming beverage clamped between his hands. "Why are you still up? Don't you have fourteen-hour shifts at the clinic this week?"_

_He glanced up from the mug he'd almost dozed into, sending her a tired smile as the dark circles beneath his eyes reflected the exhaustion they both shared. "Welcome home, honey. I got off duty a few hours early today, so I was hoping we could finally sit down and have a meal together. But I'd forgotten you were working late tonight…"_

_Raine's chest clenched when he gestured to the covered dinner plate he had left out for her across the table. "You didn't have to. I was just going to rinse off and then crash."_

_The smile faded from James's face. "Oh. It's just that I barely see you anymore with our work schedules the way they are. How about having dinner, and you can tell me about your day tinkering with those jukeboxes?" The crease between his eyebrows deepened when she stood fixed in place, and he lowered his gaze to his drink as the rift between them grew ever more noticeable. "Don't shut me out, Raine. You're all I have left in this world. And I'm here for you, too. Just… remember that."_

_He rose to his feet and placed the mug in the sink before passing by and giving her a kiss on the forehead. She felt her heart wrench a little at the affection, but her hands remained at her sides as he ruffled the tendrils sticking out from her messy bun._

_"Your supplements are next to your plate. Take them, at least. I don't want your health to wane," James instructed._

_At her nod, he made his way to his bedroom, the soft click of his door preceding the heavy silence. She stared after him, a maelstrom of emotions grappling for acknowledgement inside her. The instinct to call out to him and reforge their connection was almost overpowering, but she knew the burden he already carried, and so she bore her own._

_Raine sighed and approached the table, removing the plate cover to find homemade breadsticks and heated canned ham. Her stomach gave an adamant rumble when the aroma of decent food wafted up to greet her. After a moment of deliberation, she sat down and made certain James's culinary efforts didn't go to waste._

_Twenty minutes later, while rinsing off the dishes, she heard a loud knock at the front entrance. A flash of anger surged through her as she shut off the faucet and checked the hallway to ensure it hadn't disturbed her father's sleep. Hurrying across the apartment, she wiped her dripping hands on her jumpsuit and prepared to snap at the impertinent visitor pounding on the door at this time of night._

_Hitting the button to open it, she snarled, "What the fuck do you want?"_

_Officer Stevie Mack stood there in his security uniform, glowering at her. "I've got orders to take your father in for some questioning."_

_"Now? No way. Do it in the morning."_

_"I work the graveyard shift, so yeah, it's happening_ now. _Where is he?"_

_Raine slammed her palm into the doorframe to block his path when he moved to enter. "I'll gladly break my other hand to slug your face again if you don't back off. What is this about?"_

_Stevie's fingers wrapped around his baton. "You've got three seconds to get the hell out of the way. These are the Overseer's orders, and I'm carrying them out."_

_Her gut twisted. Of course. It was always the Overseer. "What does he want with my dad? If it's something I can resolve, then bring it up with me."_

_"So would you happen to know anything about several bottles of supplements disappearing from the pharmacy?" Stevie asked, sneering. "The older residents need them, but there's been a mysterious shortage lately. We think they've been stolen. And rumor is, the doctor's the culprit."_

_Raine felt the blood drain from her face as she thought of the rows of bottles James had stashed in their medicine cabinet. Due to the demanding hours of her job, she had begun lacking adequate nutrition. She couldn't very well reveal that he had taken the supplements for her sake._

_"I did it," she declared, her shoulders tensing when she considered the punishment that would follow. It didn't matter. So long as they left James alone. "I broke into the pharmacy without my dad knowing. I needed the supplements since I barely have time to eat anymore with all the work I have to do."_

_Stevie stared hard at her, reading her eyes as she disguised the lie as the truth. "Wow. Seriously? You never learn your lesson, do you? Wait till the Overseer hears you've got another strike."_

_"Well, if he didn't assign me these fucking ridiculous hours—" She stopped and took a deep breath before her mouth made things worse for herself. "Anyway, yeah. It was me. I'll face the music, whatever."_

_The officer released his baton and pulled out a pen and notepad, scribbling down what looked like a report. "Fine. Doc's off the hook, but you're going to be in some deep shit. Don't bother going to work tomorrow. Bring all the stolen bottles to the security station. If we find out you left any behind… well, think that over. Though thinking's not your strong suit, is it? You're gonna feel the reckoning now."_

_Raine's muscles tightened as her gaze seared into the floor. "I don't care. You were all going to burn me at the stake sooner or later. Might as well get it over with."_

_Stevie studied her, curiosity overtaking some of the harshness in his features. "You know, this all started even before the Overseer found out you were screwing his daughter. What the fuck did you do in the first place to get on the Vault's bad side, anyway?"_

_She glanced at him, feeling a thousand times beaten by the very question she'd always asked herself. "That's the thing. I don't even know."_

Raine rolled over as the dream faded back into the depths of her subconscious. She woke to the dark interior of her room, the familiar smell of musk and creaking noises bringing her back to the present. A palpable weight settled over her sternum, and she raked the fingers of one hand through her tangled hair as she buried her face back into the pillow, ignoring the fresh tear streaks on the fabric.

The burdens had consumed her one by one after she'd taken the fall for James, twisting and warping her right in front of her father's worried but unseeing eyes.

x-x-x-x-x

A loud coughing fit resonated from somewhere down the corridor when Raine stepped out past noon. Casting a disinterested glance in that direction, she scratched at her scalp and dragged herself, yawning, toward the communal bathrooms around the corner. As soon as she strode by the entrance of the hotel, however, something tugged at the back of her oversized shirt.

She flinched at once, whirling around to find Vera standing there and watching her in concern. "What?"

"Hey, how are you doing?" the hotel manager asked, beckoning her into the empty lobby.

Raine hesitated, but then shifted the towel and clean clothing in her arms before following the other woman inside. "Same as ever. Why?"

Vera led the way to the corner past the front desk, where Mister Buckingham issued them a standard greeting. "Well, that's good that you haven't caught whatever sickness is going around this deck," she remarked, turning and folding her arms across her chest. "But how are you sleeping lately?"

Raine exhaled and hoped she wasn't delaying her shower over mere small talk. "Considering the lumpy mattress, thin walls, and stuffy climate, I'd say just peachy. Sex would help, though."

"Look," Vera said, paying no attention to that last part, "I've heard you almost every night in your room since we… called off our arrangement. And I'm starting to worry."

Apprehension wormed its way through Raine's stomach as she guessed at the subject. _Damn it._ "Well, don't. Whatever you hear, I'm probably just dreaming. Why, do I talk in my sleep?"

"It's not even just talking. Most times you're muttering, other times you're whimpering, but sometimes you're crying, Raine." A pained look crossed Vera's expression, and she moved as if to reach out, but stopped herself. "Are you sure you're all right?"

The younger woman shrugged, cheeks heating at the knowledge that evidence of her repressed past still surfaced outside her waking hours. "Don't think anything of it. Probably just nightmares of all the Wasteland horrors and shit. If you've ever had to take on a herd of feral ghouls by yourself in the metro tunnels, you'd probably cry, too."

Vera frowned, appearing unconvinced. "You didn't sound scared, you sounded hurt. Agonized. Do you remember your dreams when you wake up? I could schedule a counseling session with Father Clifford or Diego for you."

A vein throbbed in Raine's temple as the Vault residents' vindictive stares flashed across the dark recesses of her memory. "No, I don't remember them, and no, I don't need counseling. So unless you're offering to start sleeping with me again, just drop it."

Approaching footsteps halted Vera's retort, and both women glanced at the entrance as the lumbering form of Sister walked in, his nose still bruised and bandaged from the clash with Raine the other day. Upon spotting her, his typical glower deepened, and he kept his eyes locked on hers as he took a seat on one of the lobby benches. She stiffened at his presence and sent Vera a meaningful glare, communicating the silent end to their conversation. Giving the hotel manager no chance to speak further, she pivoted on her heel and stalked out.

The encounter repeated several times in her mind as she continued on to the women's showers. Why Vera would care enough to take her aside and offer to help, she couldn't begin to understand, but she did admit to some degree of appreciation for the gesture. Trepidation seeped into her at the discovery of her unconscious verbalizations, providing yet another issue in need of resolving. She shook her head at her own inability to keep that side of her buried deep within the nether, where it belonged. But beneath it all, she knew the demons endured, waited, thrived.

And ultimately, she had brought the recurring nightmares upon herself.

Once Raine stepped inside the dank bathroom, she grimaced at the sound of someone retching in one of the stalls to the right. The foul stench of regurgitated alcohol and stomach acid permeated the area, and she held her breath while skirting around that section to hurry to the showers. As soon as she set her towel and change of clothes down on the cracked counter next to the line of sinks, the stall door opened, and someone came stumbling out. She peered over at the miserable soul, only to curl her lip in open disgust when Trinnie's bedraggled and hungover form appeared in her line of vision.

_Fucking fantastic…_

"Oh, just my goddamn luck," the girl spat, echoing Raine's thoughts the moment she caught sight of her. "The first thing I have to see today is your stupid face. You haven't gotten your ass kicked out of the city yet?"

Raine scoffed and turned away to resume her business. "Nope. Just like it's a wonder you haven't spread venereal disease throughout the city yet. Then again, that might be because you're too busy getting shitfaced all the time. You should really look into getting a few penicillin shots, though."

She heard the footsteps stomping up behind her, but reacted too late to the hand that grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked mercilessly.

"Take that back, you fucking bitch," Trinnie snarled, pulling hard enough on Raine's long tresses to tear a few strands from the roots. "Watch, you're gonna be sorry you ever came on this boat and got on my bad side. Always looking down on me like I'm scum when you're the one people can't stand. And you think you can just lay low and pretend last year didn't happen? I know more than you think. You're so caught up in your own broody bullshit that you made it so damn easy to—"

The sound of bone cracking bone resounded in an earsplitting clap around the bathroom as Raine's elbow collided with Trinnie's cheek. The impact loosened the grip on her hair and sent Trinnie flying into the opposite wall, knocking her out cold when her skull hit the metal. Rage and shock entwined in a brief whirlwind of realization, and Raine hissed an expletive as she shook out her arm, dismayed at her own reflexive tendencies. Her scalp stung from the assault, but she disregarded the pain as she swept her incensed gaze over the unconscious girl.

After a moment's dilemma, Raine swore bitterly and stomped over to check the other's breathing. Once she confirmed Trinnie was still alive—fortunately or unfortunately, she couldn't decide—she heaved a weary sigh and braced herself against the nearest sink, reluctant to imagine how the rest of the day would develop. More community ostracism, more antipathy, and another tick on her record of misdemeanor and violence. Security would have a field day deliberating whether the time had come to give her the boot. The fun just never ended.

Regardless, she pushed off from the sink and forced herself to carry on. She had to weather the repercussions. She had to stay focused. She had to keep going.

Because that was the only choice she was giving herself.

Bending down, she seized Trinnie by the waist and decided on the princess-style carry instead of the fireman's in order to avoid contact with the putrid stains on the front of the girl's attire. Struggling across the bathroom and out the exit, she carried her all the way to the clinic and plopped her next to the closed door, panting from the exertion. A chorus of wheezing and hacking from inside dissuaded her from knocking, and she swiveled around to leave, figuring someone would find Trinnie there eventually.

And then a particular sentence floated belatedly through her head.

_“I know more than you think.”_

Raine stopped to ponder the foreboding statement. _More about what?_

Two seconds later, a familiar figure rounded the corner, and she ran a hand down her face when his attention snapped to her straight away.

_Christ. Of course._

"What happened this time?" Harkness demanded, marching over as he glimpsed the motionless girl behind her.

Raine dropped her arm to her side and eyed him banefully. "Just think up the worst possible scenarios and take your pick," she declared in exasperation. "It'll save me the trouble of explaining the truth that you won't bother believing."

He came to stand in front of her, his livid glare lacking its usual edge. "Try me this time."

The less severe tone of his voice gave her pause, and she blinked up at him, taken aback. He stared at her in expectation, his gaze straying for a fleeting moment to her chest as she struggled to find the words to present her case for once. She wondered at the unexpected change in his temperament toward her, but bit back the snarky comment rising in her throat, deciding against pushing her luck.

"An argument got heated, and my reflexes got the better of me. Or the better of her, rather," Raine stated, still guarded as she watched for his reaction.

Harkness studied her in the fluorescent light of the corridor, giving no immediate hint to his opinion on the matter. A strained and quiet minute stretched between them, which only deepened her bewilderment with every unnerving second that ticked by. The shadows in his features darkened as he finally shifted closer, and she recognized the inquiry, the calculation in his eyes.

"I'm going to give you a pass just this once," he began in a low and controlled timbre, "but you need to quit this habit of getting yourself into altercations. No matter what the provocation is."

Raine gaped at him, stunned and speechless. _Did something fry his personality program?_

She settled for nodding as her wariness intensified. If this was a new tactic to bait her into doing something stupid, she failed to identify it. Speculation and distrust spun a web of caution around the progression of her thoughts, but she couldn't help the feeling that the previous day's events played a part in his altered disposition. Uncertain how else to proceed, she averted her gaze and made to walk past him.

He caught her arm before she got very far. "If you're still looking for work, try paying a visit to Pinkerton," Harkness told her, his lips too close to her ear for comfort. "As far as receptive people in the city go, he's probably your best bet. Now get moving. Security's conducting an unrelated investigation on this deck."

Raine pulled away, but sent him a last look-over before nodding again. "Yeah, I'll do that."

Filing that tip into her mental to-do list, she ambled back down the corridor and tried to forget about the peculiar traces of something indecipherable in the way he had looked at her.

x-x-x-x-x

A deafening bang preceded a series of reverberations throughout the workshop, startling the single inhabitant standing over the dilapidated desk.

"Pinkerton, is your hermit ass still here?"

"Holy hell, what's the big idea barging in like that?" the elderly scientist yelled, scowling at the soaked young woman sauntering inside. "Oh, it's you. What do you want?"

"You realize mirelurks have moved back in to the lower levels of the bow?" Raine asked as she squeezed water from her hair while approaching him. "All I've got these days is a combat knife, so I almost didn't make it."

"Well, that really isn't my problem. And you're leaving wet footprints all over my floor," Pinkerton grouched. "Why are you back and bothering me again? I heard on the radio that you and Li somehow managed a miracle with that Project Purity fantasy, so shouldn't you be off reaping the benefits?"

She came to a stop at the other side of his cluttered work area and crossed her arms. "I live in Rivet City now. Got a permanent room at the upper deck. But I need work, and no one else is hiring me. If you've heard the reports, you can guess why."

Pinkerton glowered at her, seemingly more from the inconvenience of having her breathing the same air rather than from her Wasteland reputation. "Yeah, so what makes you think I'd be the schmuck that gives you a job?"

"Because you don't have any personal grudges against me, and it's not like you give a damn what the rest of the city would think if I came under your employment," she pointed out. _Plus, even the security chief thinks this is an acceptable idea._ "I just need something to do that would pay my room rent. I don't care what it is."

He seemed to contemplate that, the creases of his forehead growing more distinct. "Well, I guess you came at a favorable time because there's one thing I've been considering for a while now. I could give you the task, but it won't be easy. And if you actually succeed, I've got the caps to make it worth your while."

Raine practically leapt on the opportunity. "What is it?"

Pinkerton strode over to a hanging blueprint of Rivet City and jabbed his index finger at one large space. "Now that Li and her team are finally gone, the science lab is just collecting dust, isn't it? And the council is missing a seat," he said, smirking at her. "Get me reinstated. Securely enough so that no hooligans try to overthrow me. And I want to reclaim the lab for my research. I've built a good setup here, but the tech over there has always been superior. Think you can handle all that?"

Raine's expression went flat. "So you're asking me to play ambassador to the people I've already mentioned hate me too much to even listen to two words I have to say."

"Hey, take the job or leave it. You're the one asking for scraps here."

She cursed and paced the length of his workshop, thinking it over before sighing in resignation. "Fine. I could… try. But I don't even know where to start with that."

"You're a resourceful girl. I'm sure you can figure it out," Pinkerton remarked unhelpfully as he returned to his desk and flipped through a few notebooks. "Besides, you took care of that android situation in Harkness's favor, right? I didn't peg you for someone who felt compassion, but at least I know you can get things done."

Raine glanced at him, going very still.

"Compassion?" she asked, a dull ache throbbing to life beneath her skin as memories of the Vault backlash crept into her vision. "What's that?"


	6. Chapter 6

** Tattered Inside **

Raine leaned sideways against the railing overlooking the marketplace, fiddling with the dials on her Pip-Boy until Danvers strode across the ground level and announced the closing hour. A bustle of activity immediately followed as the merchants began locking up their wares for the end of the business day. She waited for most to file out of the hangar deck before adjusting the 3-ply mask over her nose and venturing down the stairs.

"Raine!" Bryan Wilks called from one of the tables at Gary's Galley. He jumped up from his seat and bounded over to her, leaving his half-eaten Salisbury Steak for an irritated Angela to clean up. "I haven't seen much of you lately. How's it going?"

"It's going," she answered, frowning when he fell into step beside her. "Look, I'm a little busy. Could you go hang out with C.J. or Vera or something?"

"Well, Harkness said earlier that you might want some company with whatever you're working on," Bryan told her, undeterred as he flicked the broken strap of his gray overalls over his shoulder.

Raine's sharp gaze swung to the boy. In the few days since she'd last seen the security chief, she had hoped their last encounter implied a new willingness on his part to ease up on his unrelenting scrutiny of her activities. Unfortunately, that seemed hardly the case.

_Guess the damn android just can't stop keeping tabs on me._

"Thanks, but no thanks," she said as they neared the storefront of Potomac Attire. "This is more of a solo job."

Bryan pouted at her, his hazel eyes taking on the puppy look. "Aw, but I was hoping to spend some time with you for once. I won't be any trouble tagging along. Honest."

"That's not it. I just prefer going about my business alone."

"Come on, you must want someone around once in a while. Besides, James and C.J. are both sick in bed, so I'm bored."

She would have protested further if not for the scratchy, pompous voice that barked at her once they reached her destination.

"The shop is closed for the night, Raine," Bannon snapped before dissolving into a coughing fit next to his register. His usual impeccable grooming had been replaced by a sloppily donned ensemble, the dark color of his complexion now grayish and appearing haggard.

Raine glared at him as he coughed without covering his mouth, and she removed her mask to press it over Bryan's face. "Watch the germs, asshole."

"Oh, shut up," Bannon rasped between coughs, returning her annoyance. "Security and Preston said this virus or whatever isn't airborne."

Still, she fastened the straps of the mask over Bryan's ears and waited for the merchant to finish his hacking spell. The majority of the marketplace had cleared out by this point, with the few stragglers giving her a wide berth as they passed by. Once Bannon caught his breath, she stepped closer, pinning him with a hard stare.

"I need to talk to you about the council," she stated in a low pitch. "It's important."

He scoffed, managing to retain his haughty demeanor despite the fact that in his condition, he looked ready to keel over and die. "Oh, please. The council is none of your concern. As one of the remaining councilmembers, I—"

"In case you've forgotten, you moron, I'm the only reason Seagrave hasn't already replaced your useless butt on that seat," Raine interjected, growing more and more irritated by the second. "I can still go to Danvers and switch up the story, tell her you were trying to blackmail Seagrave just to save your own skin. You sure you want to go that route?"

Bannon scowled, but swallowed the rest of his rejoinder when his eyes flickered to Bryan, who peered up at him in curiosity. "Well, whatever dire matter you need to talk to me about, you'll have to catch me at a later time. I'm going back to my room to get some much needed rest. And actually, why not go bother Harkness about it? He's as much a part of the council as I am, only not as significant."

Raine's teeth grinded together when he turned around and gathered his belongings. Just thinking about approaching the chief of her own accord left an unpleasant sensation in her stomach. She seized Bannon's arm as soon as he tried to step past Bryan, her fingers digging into the scrawny limb.

"Pinkerton wants his place back on the council now that Dr. Li's run off to the Commonwealth, and I'm going to help him," she rumbled. "But we'll need your cooperation."

Although she kept her tone quiet enough for no one else to hear, the Staleys across the way noticed her aggressive move and hollered a warning. She paid them no heed, too incensed by the task itself to care about the further decline of the public opinion surrounding her. Whether or not Pinkerton had assigned her this impossible chore on purpose, she'd been a fool to anticipate any outcome other than failure. It had taken her days to gather enough confidence to at least try, but given her perpetual incompetence at socializing or negotiating in any amicable capacity, it seemed a doomed endeavor after all.

"First off, unhand me, you savage woman," Bannon ordered, yanking his arm away. "And second, Pinkerton? Didn't someone mention a while ago that that old coot is still somewhere in the city?"

"Yeah, that was me. Oh, and he wants the science lab back, too," Raine replied. She shook her head at her inadvertent relapse as an errand girl for the reclusive scientist. "So I need you to vote in because his reinstatement is the only way I'll be able to get a job on this goddamn boat."

Bannon gave a derisive snort, which resulted in him scrambling for a handkerchief when mucus flew from his nostrils. "Count me out. Why should I agree to the demands of that elderly has-been or care about your employment status?" he inquired, wiping his nose. "In fact, why are you even still living here? Isn't there another city you can mope around in and estrange? Or did you already manage to annihilate every other settlement in the Capital Wasteland?"

Heat flushed her cheeks as the simmering anger crawled up her spine, burning and winding across the fragile restraints of her temper. She gripped the wrench on her tool belt while contemplating an adequate response. Why did she even bother? Every single attempt at interaction with these people ended with the inevitable punchline of her negative history. She understood the unremitting animosity for her character and the deeds she'd done, but all she wanted were the means to live a simple existence, and even more frustrating was her inability to prove that she had no ulterior motives.

As Bannon rotated to walk away in smug satisfaction, Bryan pulled down the mask and hopped into his path.

"Hey, don't be like that," the boy piped up. "What's wrong with bringing Pinkerton back? I heard he was working on getting this ship to good condition way back when. Wouldn't it be great if it could sail again?"

"And that would matter to me why?" Bannon grumped as he shoved his arms into his lightweight coat. "I've heard the old stories about seasickness, and with my delicate constitution—"

"But if Rivet City could float along the coast, we could trade with more people, and your store would get more customers," Bryan pointed out. "Isn't that a good thing? Pinkerton could make it happen if he's as great a researcher as people say."

Raine gawked at the kid as soon as the dollar signs flashed in Bannon's eyes. _Well, I'll be damned. That's one way to make a pitch. Makes sense, too._

"Hmm. Say, you might have something there, son," the merchant admitted at once, doing a one-eighty as monetary daydreams took over his expression. "We could even mosey on down to the southern Wastes… I'll bet the gulf coast inhabitants have never even seen wares like mine…"

Raine regarded him warily, almost getting a clear visual of his bottle cap-lined fantasies. "So you'll vouch for Pinkerton's return to the council?"

He blinked, drifting back down from Cloud Nine to glower at her. "Fine, yes, I'll recognize the old fart's reinstatement. But as for the science lab issue, you'll have to talk to Harkness about that. I have nothing to do with scientific pursuits, academia, et cetera. Now, if you'll finally excuse me…"

Bannon spun on his heel and marched toward the entrance to the upper deck, leaving Raine and Bryan staring after him. A few seconds went by before she glanced down at the boy, who beamed and took off the mask to hold it out to her. She accepted it back and studied the brightness in his countenance.

"Did Harkness tell you to follow me around for that purpose?" she demanded, ushering him along when a passing security officer declared the marketplace officially closed to customers.

"For what purpose?" he asked, all smiles and innocence.

Her eyebrows drew together, but she dropped it when her sight fell on an item of interest. "Never mind."

Bryan watched as she stuffed the mask into her pocket and swiped the broken radio from Seagrave's front counter on their way out. "Um, should you be taking that?"

Raine peered behind her to ensure no one else had witnessed the action. "I broke the damn thing, so I'm going to repair it," she stated as they climbed up the metal staircase. "Now go run along. I need to find that andr—that uptight security chief and figure out how to get him on board this council fiasco." Even as she said the words, her heart plummeted at the idea of trying to persuade Harkness to agree to _anything_ that came out of her mouth.

"Maybe I can help again?"

She opened the heavy door of the exit for Bryan and sighed, finding the hopeful note in his voice almost endearing. Although she had a feeling that it would be best to confront Harkness on her own, she realized she didn't mind the thought of having the well-mannered boy hanging around for the rest of the day. "Listen, if you're that desperate for company, drop this radio off at my room and wait for me there. I can teach you a thing or two about electronics if you're up for it."

"Gee, that's a good idea. Yeah, I'd like that," Bryan said, sounding enthusiastic as he took the device in both arms. "Also, last I saw Harkness, he was already going to the science lab, so you should head that way."

Raine nodded and stepped into the upper deck corridor with him. "All right. I'll see you in a bit, then." The cordial sentence felt strange to speak, but not altogether unpleasant.

He paused once he reached her door to the right. "Hey, Raine? I really am glad you found me in Grayditch. People can say what they want about you, but I know there's gotta be more to your story. My papa always said, 'Don't judge a book by its cover. The ones with the toughest covers usually need the most care… because they're the ones most tattered inside.'"

She froze at his statements, unable to come up with a retort as he disappeared inside her room. The perception he demonstrated in matters involving her background perplexed her to no end. For a boy of eight, he displayed a remarkably astute demeanor, wise beyond his years and able to socialize on a level she would never grasp. She chalked it up to his experiences, the sequence of events that had ended with his orphaning. Loss and trauma had a way of forcing a kid to grow up, cutting the childhood stage short to develop coping mechanisms for the bleak reality of the world.

She should know.

The short walk down the corridor led her straight to the science lab. Trying the door, she opened it with ease and entered the premises. A rush of cool air hit her as she strode across the high platform, the remaining lights flickering down below in the main research area. A pervading smell of chemicals saturated the facility, growing stronger with every clanging step she took down the stairs. No other noise save for the hum of the few working terminals filled the space, and she cast a vigilant gaze around, trying to catch a glimpse of the glowing orange retinas of Harkness's eyes.

Amidst the abandoned desks and stations, numerous stacks of Aqua Pura crates sat nearly depleted. Raine wandered past them, ignoring the reminder of the Brotherhood's request for her involvement in protecting the water caravans. To this day, she felt justified in leaving the Citadel; they'd expected too much, and she was through with collaborative efforts. Coming to stand in the center, she placed her hands on her hips and scanned her surroundings, seeing no sign of the security chief.

"Harkness," she called out, his name sounding like a complaint on her tongue.

Silence.

"A3-21," she muttered cautiously. When another round of stillness answered, she turned back to head out.

However, the monitor of one of the nearby terminals stopped her in her tracks. While the other monitors displayed regular black and green standby screens, this one showed a slight discrepancy in its navigation bar. A small misaligned icon blinked offbeat from the rest. To the untrained eye, it would have gone unnoticed, but Raine knew these computers had been set to perfect synchronization before Li's team had relocated to the Jefferson Memorial.

Someone had reprogrammed this terminal since then.

More than likely, security may have needed to boot up the system for archiving water shipment memos. But then, she'd hacked into enough of their computers to know they kept their reports in their own database in the security quarters. Furthermore, civilians were prohibited from accessing any of the equipment in the lab. She sidled closer and examined the terminal, reaching out to press a few keys on the keyboard. A discreet but unfamiliar window suddenly popped up in the lower left corner of the screen. She squinted at the blinking cursor near the bottom, identifying the program as some sort of messaging interface.

_What the hell?_

And then she started.

**_Relay your status on the latest assignment._ **

Raine stared at the words that had appeared in the top box of the window. _Did someone… type and send that just now?_

Several thoughts darted through her mind, centering on the potential evidence of real time person-to-person text-based communication. She hesitated as she went over the feasibility. Wireless capabilities outside the satellite network and her Pip-Boy should have been impossible in the Wasteland, especially on a floating aircraft carrier like Rivet City. If someone had succeeded in setting up a connection here, she wanted to know how and why.

But more importantly, who.

**_Are you there?_ **

She pursed her lips at the confirmation. _Yep. Someone's typing on the other side in real time._

Thinking quickly, she placed her fingers on the keyboard and gave it a shot.

**_Active._ **

Nearly half a minute passed before anything happened. She tsked when the messaging program shut itself down, the person on the other side having identified her as an external party. The software even went as far as uninstalling itself, and her hasty mashing of the keys failed to stop the process. Her suspicions increased when only the blank monitor remained, all signs of the chat interface completely erased.

Just then, one of the doors to the lab swung open. Raine looked up and saw Harkness stride in, two full crates of Aqua Pura in his arms. Their gazes locked as he made his way down the stairs, and she fought to keep her glare in check when that intense, searching expression crossed his features.

She preferred his scowling.

"What are you doing in here?" he inquired as he dropped the crates on the floor next to the closest desk.

"Trying to find you, actually," Raine declared before stepping back from the terminal. She filed the matter of the messaging software away for future deliberation. "I went to see Pinkerton like you suggested. He wants me to secure his place back on the council and get him set up in this lab again. Bannon's already for it thanks to the kid you sent to follow me around, so now I need you to give your okay. Preferably in the next few seconds so we won't have to keep looking at each other's faces."

Harkness frowned at her blunt delivery. "Why is Pinkerton requesting these stipulations?"

Raine shrugged. "I don't know, end of life crisis? He just wants to have some say in the city administration again or whatever. So yes or no?"

She crossed her arms, growing restless beneath his penetrating gaze. He approached and stood in front of her, visage as analytical as ever, but once again carrying the indistinct quality that set her on edge. His proximity forced her to see him past the security armor, and she became aware of his towering height, the broadness of his frame, that infuriatingly smooth hairstyle that hadn't a hair out of place.

She broke their eye contact when a sudden inclination to reach out and mess it up twitched in her arm.

"I'll meet with Bannon and talk it over, but I'm making no promises. And it'd be better if you could coax Pinkerton out of his cave to join us in the discussion," Harkness remarked. "I'd rather hear his terms coming from him."

Raine's head snapped back up in automatic resentment. "You think I'm lying about that geezer's requirements because I'm up to something?"

"You did commendable work on Private Jones, but you understand why I still can't lower my guard when it comes to you." He ambled toward the desk she had been hovering over. "What were you doing on this terminal?"

Her shoulders stiffened. "Nothing."

Harkness sent her a sharp glance and gestured to the keyboard. "I can see fresh fingerprints on it. If that's not obvious enough, they match up perfectly with yours."

"There's a record of my prints saved in that canister you call a head?" Raine snapped, her abhorrence for the chief returning with full force. "What the fuck is your problem? You're the one who told me to go see Pinkerton. And now that I'm jumping through hoops trying to make his bucket list come true, you still find time to accuse me of plotting shit? Screw you. The Institute must have built you with a permanent stick shoved up your ass."

She whirled around and kicked a chair out of her way as she prepared to storm out, hands fisted over the tools on either side of her belt. _Fucking hell. Guess I need to find a Plan E for making an income now…_

Before she made it five steps toward the exit, Harkness's voice resonated throughout the entire facility.

"You're a wild card," he barked after her. "A conundrum. Nothing you do is consistent or logical. You make your choices based on unknown and capricious reasoning. You'll bring an orphaned boy to the city, but drive out the other children. You'll spare an android from capture, but convince another man to kill himself. When you claim you don't want to cause trouble, how am I supposed to take your word for it?"

Raine halted. The breakdown of his thoughts regarding her actions brought on a new degree of bafflement. It insinuated that he'd spent a considerable length of time examining her, observing, critiquing, and trying to make sense of her motives. She heard the frustration in his tone, the confusion, and it occurred to her that his intrusive fixation may have stemmed from a pressing need to classify her in terms a computerized brain could understand.

Did she intrigue him that much?

She took a deep breath in an attempt to calm herself before peering over her shoulder. "Because I've never lied to cover my own ass. Think about it. When was the last time you heard me give excuses for anything I did?"

The realization dawned on his face.

"And just because _you_ can't figure out why I do the things I do, it doesn't mean I don't have my own system of decision-making."

_Ah, there's the scowl._

Harkness stalked forward. "Precisely. Your rationale is too erratic for me to consider you a safe inhabitant of this city. Nothing about you adds up, and that makes you an anomaly."

She watched him in thought, experiencing something close to pity as she imagined the numbers and digits going haywire in his system every time he looked at her. "Maybe that's the real difference between humans and synthetics," she said quietly. "You can't measure all of us. Humanity as a whole is one big clusterfuck of an anomaly."

The Great War and the resulting Wasteland, for instance. Humans had thrived for over two thousand years, only to bring their entire world to ruin in the span of two hours. And now, two hundred years later, full recovery was still a dream, and people remained as spiteful and malicious as ever.

If Harkness couldn't grasp the dark complexities of the human mind, perhaps she had done him a disservice by letting him continue to walk among them.

"Well, maybe you can shed some light. If I can get a sample of your thought process, you might get more leeway," he told her after a silent minute of tension. "But given the subject, don't get your hopes up."

"I don't even get where this is going."

"For example, I want to know your reasoning for talking Mr. Lopez into taking his own life."

Raine stared at him in surprise, dumbfounded. The fact that he was even asking her for her version of the incident left her reeling. She couldn't begin to describe how foreign it felt, receiving the chance to give her own account. It took a while for her to even find the words.

"You're only asking about it now?"

"Your explanation is relevant at this time."

She exhaled and stuffed her hands into her pockets. "I didn't tell him to go on and kill himself," she began, only for Harkness to cut in.

"A security officer saw you. You went up to Lopez at the top of the bridge tower, said something to him, and then watched him jump," he stated harshly. "What could possibly have been going through your mind other than pushing him into it?"

_There you go again with your goddamn presumptions._

"Do you want my explanation or not?" Closing the distance between them, she bit out, "He went through with it to stop _me_ from jumping. All right?"

Harkness went very still, his lips parting as her pulse picked up speed. Guilt, rancor, and every other long-buried emotion welled up in her throat, reminding her of the fallacies, the lies the old man had told her when he resolved to take her place.

"I thought I talked him into going inside. Pray at the church, go look after that listless moron Ted Strayer. I said I'd keep his spot on the bridge tower warm while I watched the sunset. He saw right through me," Raine rambled, her sight going unfocused as she relived the moment. "So he told me two things: one, that a year from then, I'd be glad I didn't jump."

Harkness's expression remained paralyzed, set almost in the detached and neutral manner of a standard android.

"And two, he would take all my troubles with him and set me free." She raked her fingers through her hair, hating the memory, hating his sacrifice as she paced back and forth across the floor. "Stupid, stupid old man. He just made himself one more nightmare in my goddamn collection. And now I can't waste his effort. I have to keep plodding along."

She clamped down on the stinging in the corners of her eyes, glowering at the water and grain silos as she controlled the rampant tide of her pent-up aggravation.

"If this is true, why didn't you ever say so?" Harkness demanded in a milder tone. "You're right. You've never given excuses for your actions, even if they would have liberated you from public condemnation. Why?"

Raine let out a bitter laugh. "What, speak up for myself? That's an option? Who would have listened?"

The lessons of the Vault still looped inside her. She'd learned early on to stop caring about what others thought. People believed what they wanted.

_But there's always another side to the story. And Bryan had it right._

"Here's the thing, Chief. I'm just one big tattered mess."


	7. Chapter 7

** Next Phase of Demons **

_Raine spit out a mouthful of blood in the sink, wincing as the cut on her tongue protested the action. She scooped cold water from the running faucet with both hands and brought it to her split lip, the sensation worsening the sting before helping to numb it. Once she finished gingerly washing off her mouth, she lifted her gaze to the bathroom mirror, barely recognizing the battered visage staring back at her._

_"Fuck you, DeLoria," she seethed, although the image of his worse state after their scuffle brought her a measure of satisfaction. "Picking stupid fights like that. Dumbass will believe anything that threatens his fragile ego."_

_The slandering of her name had escalated to a point where even the Vault's delinquents now fed into the lies. Grimacing at the swelling beneath her right eye, she muttered several obscenities about the hotheaded Tunnel Snake leader and turned away from her reflection. The apartment remained silent as she staggered into the hallway, its deceitful stillness masking the turbulent atmosphere outside. She caught the lingering aroma of her father's morning coffee wafting from the kitchen, and a glance at her Pip-Boy clock told her she'd missed him by mere minutes on his way to work._

Good, _she thought while trudging to her bedroom._ The less he knows, the better.

_Stripping off the top half of her jumpsuit, she let the material hang at her waist as she opened her door. A clash of bright green against black leather met her vision at the other end of the floor, startling her with its unexpected presence. She tensed when the Tunnel Snake jacket triggered a reflexive bout of violence, and her body prepared to fly into action just as the intruder rotated toward her._

_"Raine."_

_She stopped, her outrage dwindling down to annoyance at the sight of the deep brown eyes staring in her direction. "What are you doing lurking around my room?"_

_Her boyfriend frowned, his brutish features scrunching into an expression of concern. "Sorry… front door was unlocked, and I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Butch showed up at the rec room all beat up and pissed, but he didn't say nothin' more than that you'd been asking for a pummeling. I didn't even know you guys still duked it out with your fists."_

_Raine scowled and stepped inside, shutting the door behind her. "I didn't, either, until that limp-wristed hairdresser came at me in the corridor. He should've known better than to take on someone who used to lift jukeboxes."_

_"Jesus, just look at your face, babe." Heavy legs strode forward, his fingers stretching out to her. "What was the fight about, anyway?"_

_She batted away his hand when he tried to touch her cheek. "Your dipshit of a leader is buying into the new wave of bull about me." Venom seeped into the angry treble of her voice as she glared at him and added, "What, you haven't heard? Apparently, I've been looking to run your gang into the ground by leaking Butch's medical records to the Overseer as 'proof' that he's unhinged. Give me a fucking break. It's like the Overseer isn't satisfied that three-fourths of the Vault already hates my guts. He needs to make sure the last quarter get on my case, too."_

_"I didn't know about these new rumors, but you're sayin' the Overseer started them?"_

_Raine moved past him and sat at the edge of her bed to pull off her boots. "Had to be. They're roundabout enough so that he can confirm them if people ask for the truth. I'm so sick of this shit, but it's his word over mine."_

_The sordid lies ranged from tales of her alleged prejudice toward people of color to accusations of food ration theft. She found it maddening that the other citizens simply accepted these indictments as fact when no evidence ever surfaced to back them up. Then again, nothing new there._

_She threw her hefty footwear against the opposite wall and then wriggled out of her jumpsuit, dropping it on the floor. Left sitting in her tank top and shorts, she examined the bruises on her arms and legs. Neither she nor Butch had pulled any punches. The marks trailed across her fair skin, symbolizing the perilous road that awaited her from this point forward._

_However, in a way, they had their uses._

_The bedsprings creaked underneath a joining weight as her boyfriend plopped down next to her. She recoiled when he reached out and stroked her hair, put off by the uninvited contact. His usual timid demeanor had faded in recent days, replaced by a more assertive disposition. Although she couldn't pinpoint the reason for the change, she got the notion that some opportunistic mentality had come into play as he watched her fall lower and lower on the Vault social ladder._

_While she had always held the dominant role in their relationship, she recognized the gradual shift in the balance of power between them._

_"I'll always be on your side, don't worry," he remarked, tucking several dark strands behind her ear. She heard the resolute edge, the unspoken declaration that he could do better than Amata had in supporting her. "I'm kinda surprised and relieved, though. I thought the Overseer would do worse to you after the stolen supplements thing."_

_Raine's gaze hardened and bore into the shiny linoleum beneath their feet. "He did. My job's been changed to clinical test subject."_

_A few moments passed in suspended silence. She sensed his confusion and uncertainty, knowing he had picked up on the hitch in her words. Going from maintenance to the medical field might have sounded like a promotion, but as always, the Overseer's supposed mercy came with a catch._

_Finally, he asked, "Is it that bad? Doesn't that mean you'd be working with your dad in the clinic?"_

_Raine snickered bitterly._ Oh, you simpleton… _"No." Her fingertips came up to graze her temples, where the bruises from Butch's blows disguised the electric burns she'd hoped to hide. "It means something else entirely."_

_With harsh clarity, she still felt the tightness of the straps and binds. The thundering fear. The loss of control._

_And the refusal to plead for clemency through it all._

_She had stopped worrying about the gaps in her memory upon realizing the contents were better off lost. Her mind recalled nothing of the blank spaces, but her body remembered something painful beyond coherent thought. She peered down at the new customary shakiness in her fingers, suspecting permanent damage in her motor control. In time, more than just neuromuscular ability would break down. But she'd chosen this option. If it meant protecting her father, she could continue on. Endurance. Willpower. She placed significant faith in her strengths._

_And yet—_

_Raine choked back the sting of frustrated tears as her caged spirit decried the injustice._

_How much was she willing to pay for the wrongs she'd never committed?_

_She dropped her head in her hands and fought through the moment of self-pity. A solemn quality filled the air as her boyfriend's palm landed on her knee. He scooted closer, murmuring consoling statements and reiterating his love for her. Sincerity rang in his deep timbre and eased the stiffness of her frame, as it usually did. She allowed the contact of his lips against her ear, feeling herself unwinding enough to lower her walls. He kissed her jaw at her tentative receptiveness, his close proximity surrounding her in the scent of his aftershave._

_Raine sighed and pushed her troubles from her thoughts as she leaned into him. She felt no real sense of security or infatuation in his presence, but as a significant other, he'd proven adequate, comfortable. Despite her one-track focus on surviving and pulling through her circumstances, she could appreciate a distraction. And with his fingers making their way inside the front of her shorts, he gave her little choice._

_The breath left her lungs when he rubbed the sensitive nub at the base of her sex, instant tendrils of heat shooting through her in response. She clenched both fists into the collar of his jacket, burying her face against his chest while shifting her hips. The rough calluses of his digits brushed against her soft folds as he teased her, and she restrained the small noise rising in her throat when his free hand tugged on her hair to lift her head._

_Their kiss tasted of need and desperation, the sort that kept the bleakness of reality at bay. She surrendered to it as he continued his clumsy but improving ministrations between her legs, shuddering when he groaned her name against her lips. The desire in his tone hinted at the hardness straining inside his pants, but she hesitated in reaching for it, still ambivalent about intimacy with_ that _part of a man. Although aware she couldn't put it off forever, only the images of a woman splayed out and wet kindled her true arousal._

_Suddenly, Raine's entire body went rigid when his fingers dipped deep inside her, and they both felt the intact resistance that served as a reminder of her former non-binary sexuality._

_Seizing his wrist, she growled, "No. You know I don't like penetration."_

_He frowned in clear disappointment as she shoved him and his intruding limbs away from her. "Come on, babe, we've been goin' out for three months now. Couldn't we just try—"_

_"No."_

_"But I even learned to give head for you. If you won't have sex, how about just returning the favor? My dick and I are dyin' here."_

_She winced as her eyes flickered to the bulge in his jumpsuit. "I… need time for that. A lot. A whole lot."_

_He lowered his gaze and ran a hand through his slicked back hair. "I'm never gonna get laid," he muttered, pouting. "Guess this is what I get for dating a lesbian. Bet you put out for Amata no problem."_

_"I'm not—" She cut off her own retort and pressed her mouth into a hard line. Irritation surged forth and ignited, sharpening her tongue as she snapped, "If what you want is someone to fuck, then get lost and don't come back. I've got enough problems without you pressuring me for sex every other day."_

_She acknowledged the folly of driving away one of her only allies and modes of support, but the prospect of forcing herself to accommodate his carnal wishes took a significant toll. Her evolving orientation aside, she found it bothersome to add yet another topic of debate to her list of worries. More pressing concerns loomed in the foreground, and logic dictated that she eliminate all other sources of stress. If cutting one's partner loose meant traversing this nightmare alone, she'd deal with it._

_However, he immediately threw himself forward, enveloping her in a constricting, frantic hug. She struggled to sit upright and free herself, but he had clamped on, everything in his posture reflecting pure anxiety. In light of his increasing self-confidence, she'd forgotten about his baffling attachment and dependence on their relationship, which seemed to trump all other factors. He nearly crushed her with his surprising strength as he held on tight, and he ignored her order to let go even when she kicked his shin._

_"Sorry. I didn't mean it. I'm sorry," he apologized repeatedly in despair. "I love you, Raine. You know that. Don't break up with me."_

_It was a little disconcerting hearing someone beg for her favor. As the resident outcast of Vault 101, she still had no idea what compelling force drew him to her. She stared down at the shine of pomade in his hair as he pressed his face against her abdomen, a wave of perplexity overcoming her anger._

_"You can't just go ask someone else out?" Raine demanded. "Maybe someone who isn't on the Vault's wanted list?"_

_"No," he protested into her tank top. "Only you. You're the only one. I don't want anyone else."_

_At that point, she'd brushed it off as mere infatuation._

_She couldn't have predicted the depth of obsession that ran deep in his core._

When she woke this time, a severe crick in her neck dispelled her bleariness. Sharp prickles shot through her upper body when she lifted her head from her arms folded over the desk, where she'd fallen asleep. The half-repaired radio sat on the other side, wires still hanging out of its open speakers. Raine groaned and sat back on her rickety chair to try and stretch the soreness away. What time was it? What day?

Before she could check the clock on her Pip-Boy, a loud snore drifted over from the bed.

Bryan lay sprawled out on her mattress, limbs splayed in different directions as he drooled on her pillow. One hand still held a screwdriver in a loose grip, and in the light of her desk lamp, she made out the dark circles beneath his eyes, which signified a dire lack of sleep. He babbled nonsensically as he slumbered, with the occasional coherent, "Circuits and volts are fun," thrown in.

Shaking her head, Raine made a mental note to cut the electronics lessons to shorter hours, although the boy's enthusiasm in helping to fix Seagrave's radio did please her somewhat. He demonstrated no particular talent for electronic components thus far, but his eager attitude for learning resulted in enough progress to impress her. She watched his well-earned rest, a ghost of a smile spreading over her lips.

It faded just as quickly when the contents of her latest nocturnal recollection crept along the outskirts of her working memory. She leaned forward and glanced down at her hands in her lap, replaying the scene over and over against her better judgment. Then, lifting trembling fingers, she traced the jagged scars across her chest.

Thus commenced the next phase of demons.

The dreams of Freddie had begun.

x-x-x-x-x

She kept her palm planted firmly against the cantankerous man's back as she steered his resisting form toward the security office. Most of the older passersby did double-takes at the sight, for his reappearance came as a shock. People in the younger age group didn't recognize him, but they gawked all the same. His reputation preceded him in the tales of his past work—almost legendary throughout Rivet City—and he retained enough visible sourness and ego to drop hints of his identity.

Raine shoved him past the unlocked metal door to their destination, weary from the day's exertion and hoping to get the whole affair over with as soon as possible.

"Well," Harkness commented straight away as he narrowed his eyes at the pair striding into his office. "I can't say I expected you to actually succeed in prying this man from his workshop, Sinclair."

The security chief’s recent unsettling civility still rubbed her the wrong way, and she sent him a sharp look before pushing a reluctant and sour-faced Pinkerton front and center. "When persuasion and reason didn't work, brute force did," she replied, slamming the door behind them. "All right, he's here. Let's get on with this council hearing or whatever the hell it is."

Pinkerton took the time to communicate his aggravation by glowering at everyone in the room. He straightened his disheveled attire and then crossed his arms, almost like a petulant child. Danvers had stationed herself at the corner near the lockers, possibly to act as a mediator in case the impending discussion grew too heated. Meanwhile, Bannon coughed into a handkerchief from his seat on the couch at the other end of the room, where he'd apparently been quarantined.

Harkness stood as the overbearing authority figure from behind his desk, hands resting on his hips. Raine took the opportunity to study him from beneath her lashes, something she now did with increasing frequency. He reflected strict professionalism at the moment, but his off duty disposition as of late had thrown her for a loop. Small things here and there, but enough to perturb her. A nod of approval whenever he spotted her and Bryan together in the corridors, talking electronics and engineering. A long but placid stare whenever he caught her peering at him across any distance. Not so much as a neutral, “What are you doing?” whenever he saw her standing idly about. The suspicion, the nagging, the threats of deportation… all of it had almost desisted.

Dare she say he’d actually listened to her version of the “assisted suicide” incident?

Raine shoved the possibility from her mind and leaned against the door, stuffing her hands into her pockets to wait out the meeting. _Head in the game, Raine. I swear, after all that trouble, this had better go well…_

Switching trains of thought only exacerbated her ire. The weeks it had taken to finally schedule a council hearing _and_ ensure Pinkerton’s attendance left her chafing. For a man who wanted such extensive administrative privileges in the city, he had demonstrated an infuriating lack of personal effort in obtaining it. She’d resorted to physical manhandling to fulfill her part of the deal, and she refused to leave this office until _someone_ agreed to give her paid work. Vera’s willingness to defer her room payments allowed for some leeway, but Raine hated debt and sought to pay off her outstanding balance sooner rather than later.

She tapped the toe of her boot against the floor when the silence lengthened.

"Welcome back to Rivet City proper, Pinkerton," Harkness started, watching him with a veiled intensity that snapped her out of her musings.

"I still don't see why I have to come all the way over here to present my case when Raine could have just relayed the message," Pinkerton barked and turned to glower at her.

"Because I'm not the fucking Pony Express."

"Look," Harkness rumbled, "you wanted the chance for an appeal regarding your former council seat, right? This is what it takes." He ignored the scientist's indignant grumbling and gestured to the papers on his desk. "On these documents, you have both my and Bannon's votes pending, but we need to hear your intentions. You've been around the longest, and with Dr. Li gone, it would be natural to appoint you in her place. However," he went on when Pinkerton opened his mouth to jump on that point, "I can't just relinquish the science lab to you."

Pinkerton's gaze went dark. "And why not?"

Raine noted the crackle of challenge between them, and she quirked an eyebrow at their unexpected enmity.

"From what I understand of your work, it doesn't fit into the city's interests right now," Harkness declared in an unyielding tone.

"We're focused on water distribution, not bringing this boat's systems back to life," Danvers joined in, supplementing Harkness's blatant rebuff with an explanation. "The lab is being used for shipment inventory, and we're considering forming a joint science team with the Brotherhood to develop new technology for repelling the attacks on our caravans."

Pinkerton appeared both dumbfounded and outraged. "What a waste of time and facility space. Hire out more bodies for your deliveries; don't have clueless buffoons tinkering around with equipment and instruments they don't know anything about. If it were up to me, I'd reprogram a heap of robots and other AIs and send _those_ off to hold your caravan escorts' hands. Wouldn't even take me more than a month."

Danvers blinked at him as Bannon went into another coughing fit in the background. "Other AIs?"

"No," Harkness snapped a bit too harshly. "We already have a set of goals as a community, Horace. And we have other problems to take into account." He motioned toward the couch, where the ill merchant rasped for breath.

"I'm not buying the excuses," Pinkerton stated as he drummed his fingertips against his arm. "Is there a real reason you don't want me around the science lab? Something you think you can't trust me with, son?"

The direct inquiry caused Harkness's features to harden, and Raine ran a hand down her face as Pinkerton's arrogance placed his case in jeopardy. Whether or not he believed he was above them all, Harkness still had the final say in his potential reinstatement. Raine contemplated how to drive that fact into his skull before he managed to turn this meeting into one big waste of time for everyone involved. Danvers maintained a look of puzzlement while glancing between them, apparently aware she had missed something. All the while, Bannon filled the dead air with his complimentary soundtrack of relentless coughing and hacking.

Then, before anyone had a chance to throw the next verbal jab, an idea struck her.

"Hey, why not merge the science team with Pinkerton's plan of reprogramming robots?" Raine suggested, stepping forward as four heads swiveled in her direction. "This guy's an insufferable asshole, but a smart one. Form the team under his lead for that project, and you'll have a small army of synthetic troops ready in three weeks tops."

Danvers frowned at her. "Why should we put him in charge? Also, a project of that magnitude will require a collection of neutralized units. Where are we going to find enough decommissioned robots to even consider it?"

Raine smirked. "I could draw you a map from here to Raven Rock listing all the Protectrons, Securitrons, and Mister Gutsies I've put down over the last seven months. As for making Pinkerton the big science boss, do you really have to ask? You give him control of the lab, he gives you the means to defend the water caravans, everyone's happy."

“It’s not that simple,” Harkness told her, moving around his desk to stand closer. “We’re looking at sending people we can’t spare to retrieve those units. Our manpower has already decreased by fifteen percent since this outbreak started, and more residents are getting sick every day. Then there’s the issue of Pinkerton using up resources to fuel his research, not to mention some ethical concerns over his medical-based procedures…”

He trailed off when he met Raine’s knowing gaze.

_Oh, I see now. Looks like I’m not the only one who holds grudges._

“Write up a contract for his ethical use of the lab,” she said, venturing a guess on Harkness’s reluctance to hand it over to Pinkerton. “Establish a limit on resource consumption. Outline the terms of confidentiality that he has to follow. If he breaches any of it, revoke his rights to the lab and send him back to his shitty workshop. Hell, boot him from the city if that’s what it comes to. But honestly, I don’t think you have to worry about it. I’ve got a feeling that from now on, when he makes an agreement with a patient, he’ll follow through.”

Pinkerton had quieted down while she spoke on his behalf, and Harkness drew himself to his full height as he watched her. Raine noticed the repeated dilation and contraction of his pupils, a subtle tic she’d come to recognize as his computational reasoning process. Although she harbored no doubts that he could throw out an unremitting stream of rebuttals to her points, an exclusive understanding formed among the three of them in the stillness that followed. And as she searched Harkness’s eyes, she suspected something more.

Perhaps he was computing not the logic of the suggestions, but whether or not it was time to place his trust in her.

"Say I agree to this, we send out the chosen members of the team to bring back the robots, you program them for our cause, and we stop worrying about water transports," Harkness remarked, proving he'd already intellectualized the viability of the plan. "Would you be willing to fulfill one more condition in exchange for complete control over the science lab, Pinkerton?"

Raine elbowed the old scientist when he hesitated.

"All right, all right. Yeah, sure, what is it?" he growled, rubbing his ribs.

Harkness's expression became grave. "Find the root cause of the epidemic spreading throughout the city. Accomplish that after the reprogramming project, and you'll have the lab at your disposal for whatever scientific pursuits you wish."

Raine chewed the inside of her cheek as Pinkerton scratched his head furiously.

"You want him to figure out what's slowly killing that guy?" she questioned, ignoring Bannon's noise of indignation when she jabbed her thumb toward him. "What if he can't?"

"Yeah," Pinkerton agreed at once, the objection written all over his countenance. "I'm an electrician, a general scientist, and a surgeon, not a pathologist. You're barking up the wrong tree for that."

Danvers, who had hung back to analyze the situation, piped up. "As a council member, it will be part of your responsibility. Harkness is already handling the security side of the investigation. If you want to be the science representative of the council again, you need to try to help us out with this."

"He will," Raine answered for Pinkerton when he paused again. _We all know he's going to end up going along with it, anyway._

He bristled at her interjection. "Now wait just a minute—"

"We're not asking you to go into the specifics of pathology and disease." Harkness glanced at Danvers and then returned to the other side of his desk to sift through the papers, evidently brushing aside his personal hang-ups with Pinkerton. "My personnel tracked the outbreak to the upper deck, but we haven't discovered anything else. And we can't keep up the investigation for much longer since I need my officers back on their regular patrols. We're looking to you to find the source, Pinkerton."

Raine witnessed the intense deliberation on the scientist’s face, but also picked up on the implication Harkness seemed to send her way. _Regular patrols?_

If he was suggesting what she thought, and the security force would no longer have to tail and harass her, she might start hating the chief a little bit less.

"So how about it, old man?" she pressed, turning to Pinkerton. "You do a few favors for the city, make me your assistant, and then you get that sweet facility to claim as your retirement package. It'll work out."

He glared at her. "Already offering yourself up for hire, huh?"

"As if you didn't see that coming," Raine shot back. "Electronics and computer programming are my field of specialty, so at least I'll know what the fuck I'm doing with that job."

Pinkerton held his glare for several more moments before sighing in resignation. "You know, this isn't what I was thinking when I said you'd be able to 'figure it out,'" he told her, wiping his brow. "So my own research goals are on the backburner again, eh? I'm going to be dead before I can pick up where I left off on my work."

"Get real. You're too much of a stubborn bastard to die before you finish your life's calling."

He grunted. "True."

Harkness leaned over his desk, using his palms to brace himself on the surface. "What do you think, Bannon?" he called to the other council member. "Is this basis enough to grant Pinkerton's reinstatement to the council and appoint him head of the science lab?"

Bannon shot them a baleful stare over his handkerchief. "Like I said when you dragged me in here," he wheezed, "I don't give a molerat's ass either way. I just want to go back to sleep."

The security chief straightened and nodded. "All right, then. Welcome back to the council, Pinkerton. Follow Danvers, and she'll work with you on a schedule and a list of tasks. We've got some major plans coming up, so don't skimp on the paperwork."

Raine felt a surge of relief as Pinkerton muttered a taut, "Hallelujah," and accompanied Danvers out the door. Bannon hopped up as quickly as his weak body could manage, stumbling after them while Raine prepared to follow suit. Now that the primary hurdle had passed, she grew more optimistic about her prospects. If everything went well, she anticipated returning to work on electronics and banking on caps in the very near future.

The instant she took a step toward the exit, however, Harkness’s voice stopped her.

“Sinclair.”

She slumped her shoulders and let out a long, exasperated breath. “Now what did I do?”

“If you have a minute, I want to talk to you.”

“I don’t,” she replied, eyeing him tersely.

While she appreciated the gradual alteration in his opinion of her, she found their one-on-one conversations unnerving. Something in his recent demeanor hinted at a new interest in the truth behind her reputation. And although she understood that he merely sought to make sense of her confounding nature, she had no desire to share any details of her thought process, her background, or her history.

Public liberation ranked low; acceptance, lower.

Unfortunately for her, Harkness would not be denied.

“Close the door.”


	8. Chapter 8

** The Smile among the Stars **

The command elicited a wave of instinctual defiance. Every muscle in her body urged her to give him the finger and stomp out of his office, as nothing had changed so much that she felt inclined to comply with his orders. Even so, she dawdled on the spot, held in place by some other unexplainable force.

"This won't take long," Harkness assured her, circling his desk to stand only a few yards away.

Raine gave him a sidelong glance. "Well, damn, Chief. If you wanted to be alone with me, all you had to do was ask." Another second of deliberation ended with her shutting the door against her own inner protests.

"Funny," he said in a flat tone, crossing his arms in what she'd come to identify as his default pose. "Anyway, I wanted to say good job. Not only did you get Pinkerton in here, you proposed an alternative solution that we could all live with. That shows me you're serious about earning your keep."

She balked at the praise, not quite believing where it was coming from. "Oh. Well, yeah, the whole point was to get myself employed, so don't think I did it out of the goodness of my heart and all that shit."

The corner of his mouth quirked in the slightest. "Wouldn't dream of it. There's something else I wanted to bring up, though."

Raine sighed and hooked her thumbs through her belt loops as she fully faced him. _Of course there is._

"I take it you figured out why I'm hesitant about having Pinkerton back in a position of power?"

She tilted her head in mild interest, but shrugged. "He broke your agreement about erasing your original memories, I get it. But if you think about it, he probably went with suppression over deletion in case you needed to reference your old identity down the road. He might've been thinking ahead."

Harkness's brow puckered as he retorted, "Quarantining my memories was a hazard, and Pinkerton knew that. It leads me to doubt his professional integrity and ability to adhere to a contract, repercussions or no."

She rolled her eyes at his fast tendency to both demonize people and categorize everything into black and white. "Well, bottom line is that activating your memories was the only way I could get you to believe me when Zimmer was sniffing around the place. Remember him? If it wasn't for Pinkerton, you'd be back at the Institute by now as someone's mindless robot bitch."

That added another variable Harkness had either ignored or overlooked, and he grimaced for a good while before relenting. "Fair enough. Can't promise I'll cut the old man some slack, but I see your point."

Vaguely, Raine wondered what it was like to perceive the world in cold logic; a viewpoint tempered only by the illusion of humanity. As someone whose vocational background centered on fields related to engineering and programming, she could envision the hard rationality Harkness lived by. But even given her own contemptuous mindset, she had retained the ability to see everything in different shades. Harkness may have passed for a human on a regular basis, but in reality, he still functioned as his components dictated.

And knowing this, perhaps her aversion to him extended to the fact that she saw no point in developing any sort of amicability with a machine.

"By any chance," Harkness went on, sounding a bit more tentative, "has Pinkerton mentioned anything else about my memories?"

Raine thought about it, but drew a blank. "Like what?"

"Well… anything."

"No. Why?"

He shook his head, a shadow of consternation entering his features. "Just wondering."

She studied him for a moment before shrugging again. "So can I go now?" she asked, not bothering to mask her impatience.

He hesitated, irises darkening in response. Raine frowned at the prolonged scrutiny that followed, which had become a regular occurrence during their interactions. She saw the concentration in his stare, deep and probing, a dozen processes at work as he watched her. Ever since her last dream of the Vault, she found it increasingly difficult to hold her own under his gaze. The familiar fight-or-flight sensation crept into her limbs, and she looked to the exit, in no mood to stand around for his analysis.

"Yeah, we're done here," Harkness finally answered, although he appeared far from finished with the conversation. "Last thing before you go. It pains me to say this, but it's commendable that you're making an effort."

"On what?"

"Everything." He continued to peer at her, his face once again unreadable. "Keeping yourself in check. Working to make a legitimate living. Playing by the rules. But none of it gives any real clue as to why you're here. You could've gone anywhere after Project Purity, but you picked Rivet City to call home."

She scuffed the heel of her boot against the floor. "Yep. Guess that sucks for you guys."

"Other than to be a pain in my ass, you had to have a reason."

Raine contemplated that and then bit her lip, an uncharacteristic gesture that occurred only when the cracks in her hard exterior began to show. "There's something I need from this city."

She swept her line of sight over the metal walls and fluorescent lights, representations of a past never forgotten, a world never forgiven.

"And what's that?" Harkness pressed after several seconds.

But she had never allowed herself to form the answer into words. _Wouldn't you like to know._

"Look, don't ask me to elaborate," Raine snapped as she moved toward the door, giving in to the impulse to escape his proximity. "It's just one more thing you and your fancy AI hardware will never understand."

x-x-x-x-x

The process of relocating Pinkerton and his entire workshop back to the main city took several days and a substantial amount of tolerance on Raine's part. Tasked with lugging all his heavy equipment through irradiated water and several flights of stairs, she reconsidered the wisdom of volunteering so quickly as his assistant, especially when he informed her she wouldn't receive any payment until they actually began their lab work. She endured the annoying circumstances through gnashed teeth, often fantasizing about simply dropping his favorite set of surgical tools into the nearest mirelurk nest.

A week and a half into her unwilling role as the scientist's personal moving service, Raine allowed herself a break by ignoring his earlier instructions for transporting the precision optical laser, choosing instead to loiter in her room for the afternoon and evening. Seagrave's radio sat almost completely repaired on her desk, and she leaned forward in her chair, examining it while eating a box of snacks that had likely expired in the twenty-first century. After finishing the stale crackers and tossing the empty container behind her, she downed half a bottle of purified water and cocked an ear toward the closed door.

The upper deck seemed quieter than usual today, as only the standard creaks and groans of the ship's structure provided any ambient noise. Raine listened for movements and voices—namely signs of an indignant Pinkerton's search for her—but detected only the footsteps of the occasional guard on patrol. She relaxed in her seat, taking the rare hours of peace as a sign that the world wouldn't end (again) from her one day of playing hooky.

As she resumed work on the radio, her focus waned and gave way to idle retrospection. Harkness remained an unavoidable presence in her thoughts, this time due to his role in their ambitious robot resuscitation project. From what Danvers had reported in the lab the other day, Raine's crude but detailed map of the inactive units across the Capital had already made it to the team hand-selected by Harkness. The man worked fast.

While she still held onto a healthy dose of wariness around him, he had surprised her by making good on his intention to back off from constantly supervising her day-to-day activities. She found she could now breathe in the corridors without a security officer monitoring her oxygen intake, and whenever she did see Harkness around, he actually greeted her in passing or asked about the progress of the workshop move. It had ruffled her at first, the shift into borderline personable interactions, but eventually she developed a grudging respect for his integrity.

Furthermore, she doubted he'd forgotten about her fingerprints on that suspicious terminal in the science lab, but he hadn't pursued the matter. Better for her, since that meant she needn't explain her discovery from that day. Pinkerton was still unaware of the other reason she had insisted on becoming his assistant. With free access to the lab, she could investigate the terminal and possibly track down the source of the clandestine messages. They had never wandered far from her mind, and she intended to find out whether or not the person on the other side posed a threat to the city.

As she began testing the dials on the radio, a new sound from outside alerted her to a presence across the hall. She set her tools down and whirled around in her seat when the telltale groan of a heavy door opening, closing, and locking told her someone had entered Zimmer's old room. A knot formed in her abdomen as she jumped to her feet.

_Should I check it out? Probably time I looked around in there, anyway…_

She hesitated in a moment of deliberation, listening to the silence as a foreboding feeling resurfaced. Her avoidance of those particular quarters stemmed not from an aversion to trespassing, but from a desire to _not know_ whether a certain piece of Institute property still lay inside. She had hoped to elude the responsibility for as long as possible, but with someone now poking around the place, she could no longer put it off.

Pushing everything else to the backburner, Raine swiped a bobby pin from her desk drawer and tiptoed to her own door, cracking it open. The distant footsteps of the nearest security guard echoed from an estimated two corridors away. In one fluid motion, she crossed the hallway and dropped to one knee in front of Zimmer's room, bringing the bobby pin to the locking mechanism. The scuffling noises from within sounded aggressive and conspicuous, but it was the muttering that kicked her pulse into high gear: _"Not even fucking sure this is the right place. Better not be wasting my damn time."_

Three steady prods and a click later, she turned the latch and slipped inside, readying herself for the confrontation. An acerbic smell hit her nostrils at once, and she squinted ahead beneath the single buzzing fluorescent light. As soon as the door shut behind her, someone hissed from across the floor, obviously caught off-guard by her intrusion.

"Fuck!"

Raine's eyes narrowed on the hunched form of Sister, who shot up from rummaging through a pile of broken furniture. "What the hell are you doing in here?" she demanded.

"Bitch, you're the last person who should be getting in my business," the sour-faced slaver growled. His nose appeared fully healed from their last encounter, save for a new permanent bump that stood out on the bridge. "The fuck are _you_ doing here, huh?"

"I heard someone come in and figured they were up to no good, dumbass." As she took in his fidgety manner next to the old bed frame, she grew apprehensive. "Looking for something?"

He opened his mouth as if to yell, but glanced past her and instead snarled, "I don't gotta tell you nothing. But if you wanna know so bad, I'm running out of places on this boat to hide my stash."

Raine noticed the edge to his voice, as well as the empty space in his hands and pockets. "That so? Should I call you out for lying or for being stupid?"

"I ain't got time for this."

She sidestepped out of his way when he strode a bit too hastily toward the exit. "Hey—"

"Can't leave my chems in here now that you've walked in and seen the real estate," Sister snapped, pressing his ear against the door and throwing her a dirty look. "And don't think I'm gonna let you off the hook for my nose. You'll get yours, twinkle-tits. Just wait."

Without giving her a chance to retort, he darted out.

Raine stared after him and then peered around, trying to piece together his true motive. The place had degraded into a more cluttered state since the last time she'd set foot inside, but other than the extra chairs and filing cabinets crammed along the walls, the surroundings did not seem too different. Tentative relief filled her when she noted the absence of the body she had dumped next to the desk many months ago. She had taken care of Zimmer's via flinging it into the river outside and watching it become mirelurk food. But the other…

Whatever had happened to the deactivated bodyguard Armitage, it was now out of her hands.

She ambled toward and examined the pile of interest, leaning down to sift through the junk. _What was that bastard searching for?_

When nothing unusual stuck out, she abandoned it and stepped away. Using the flashlight of her Pip-Boy for additional luminescence, she inspected every other section of the room. Crushed metal cans, a few lost caps, spare ammo, and plenty of bent utensils. Nothing to write home about.

And then, as she wandered past the desk again, something on the wall caught her eye, stopping her.

A section of the metal curled inward in a wide semicircle, suggesting a large opening hidden behind the discarded furniture. She bent closer, seeing how one could easily miss it. Cracking her knuckles, she proceeded to remove the various obstructive materials. Splintered chair backs tumbled to the floor as she pushed torn couch pieces to the side and grabbed hold of the desk. Its legs scraped harshly when she pulled, but whether or not anyone came running mattered little to her.

With the desk out of the way, she saw the full extent of the crudely carved hole, which led to an enclosed alcove large enough for a person to sit in. Kneeling down, she studied the jagged edges of the mouth and then shined her flashlight inside. Only empty space greeted her, and she found no connecting passage or secret door. For all intents and purposes, it appeared to be a mere hole in the wall.

She was about to withdraw in disappointment when she caught sight of a silver object lying at the base of the opening.

Raine blinked down at the key, so small it could have gone unseen for months or years. A layer of dust covered it, and when she picked it up to blow off the particles, she spotted a few scratches and a heart-shaped insignia on the surface. The intricate design implied substantial value, and out of habit, she dropped it into her pocket.

The desk returned to blocking the wall, and she piled the other furniture pieces back on top of it before exiting the room. Back in the corridor, she mulled over the degree of sketchiness Sister had exhibited—which was significantly more than usual—and resolved to keep an eye on him for a while. The last thing she needed was the slaver somehow managing to sabotage all the work she'd put into establishing her niche in the city. She supposed she could relay her concerns to Harkness, but the fact that the idea even crossed her mind merely guaranteed that it would not happen.

A low clicking from the direction of the stairwell reached her ears at that moment. Her gaze flickered to the connecting door, the steady rhythm of the sound spurring her curiosity. She pursed her lips and sidled closer, attempting to discern the cause.

_Something malfunctioning? Lightbulb going out? Railing about to fall off? I guess I can fix whatever it is real quick._

Her tool belt was still in her room, but she entered the stairwell to peek around and identify the problem before going to grab her gear. The clicking stopped almost at once, and she came to stand at the edge of the rails, glimpsing around the area to find only stillness. Then, just as suddenly, the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

Raine went on guard and scanned the shadows around her, rotating in a full circle to face the stairs leading down to the lower level. Aside from a few busted lights, nothing seemed out of place. However, dread weaved through her midsection all the same. She knew that feeling of someone watching, lying in wait, stalking. Murderous intent infused the space.

Even so, she reacted too late.

Something blunt and heavy collided with the back of her head, the force of it sending her barreling down to the metal floor twenty feet below.

The last thing she saw was stars, and a twisted smile among them.


	9. Chapter 9

** Subject No. 758101 **

He possessed the ability to simulate sleep on a convincing level, mimicking the human bodily processes during the theta and delta waves, all the way to the REM stage. His slow and steady breathing alternated with the occasional soft snore as his eyes moved rapidly beneath their lids. If anyone happened to glimpse him at this moment, they'd see a man deep in slumber under the dead of night. Nothing out of the ordinary.

However, the illusion—as real as it seemed—only served to disguise the recharging state of an inorganic human.

His consciousness had powered down to standby mode, and all other background functions ran on autopilot, ready to engage if disturbed. While his advanced specs allowed him a self-sufficient way of life, independent of an external power source, he needed time to reenergize just like everyone else. Dreams never occurred, but an equivalent procedure filled his idle memory with images and thoughts. He sorted through the day's events and consolidated data during this downtime, similar to how people required sleep for critical information retention. The routine gave him some semblance of normalcy in his world of digits and hex codes.

And just like any other person, he grew cranky when forcibly roused awake.

Harkness groaned and powered up his functions as the sudden pounding at his door increased in both frequency and volume. Throwing off his blanket, he rolled out of bed and barked out an irate, " _What_?"

"It's me," Danvers called, ceasing her loud knocking. "We've got a situation that Dr. Preston needs you to cover. It involves your favorite person."

Swearing, he padded barefoot to the door and threw it open. His second-in-command stood there in full uniform, having started the graveyard patrol shift. Her serious expression briefly switched to one of amusement when she looked him up and down.

"Nice boxers," she snorted, gesturing to the rubber duck-printed underwear he hadn't gotten around to tossing out. Then, glancing at his head, she added, "Were you even sleeping? How do you keep your hair all perfect like that?"

"You said something about a situation with Sinclair?" he snapped, pulling the hem of his white T-shirt farther down over his boxers.

Danvers's grin disappeared as she nodded. "Yeah. Someone assaulted her earlier tonight at around 2100 hours. I found her unconscious and a little battered at the bottom of the stairwell. Blunt force trauma to the back of the head, which I'm pretty sure sent her toppling straight down the stairs. We're still searching for the culprit."

Harkness froze as his internal processors immediately began scanning citizen records for potential suspects. "What's her condition?"

"No internal bleeding or swelling, so I'd say not critical, but…" Her brow wrinkled with trepidation. "We were going to wait until tomorrow to let you know. Clinic's full, so Preston had me take her to her room while he brought in the necessary medical equipment. But then she regained consciousness in the middle of getting stuck with an IV, and—look, we need you to help us out ASAP. Something's wrong with her. And I don't think it's just from taking a blow to the head."

"Elaborate on that last part," Harkness ordered, closing the door partway so he could get dressed. _Every single incident, every single time…_

"She's hallucinating, and in a really bad way. After Preston's sedatives failed, she panicked and started throwing punches in an attempt to escape. We have three officers trying to hold her down," Danvers said grimly.

"It takes three combat-trained individuals to neutralize one girl?"

"Raine Sinclair is a lot stronger physically than she's let on. A _lot_ stronger."

Harkness frowned as he finished lacing up his boots, more than a little perturbed by the news. His scans on Raine had always detected slight variations in her physical processes, but since she'd regularly come up clear of cybernetics, he had never attributed them to any superhuman abilities. He reviewed her file in his mental database as he secured the clasps of his armor, checking for further irregularities in his readings on her physiology. Nothing stuck out, which only increased his concern. Grabbing his plasma rifle—more for the sake of routine than out of necessity—he strode to the exit.

"All right," he told Danvers after locking up his quarters. "Let's go."

They hurried down the bridge tower and through the vacant corridors of the upper deck. Although he appeared as collected as ever, his systems worked double time in the background, pulling up various profiles of residents most likely to have malicious intent toward Raine. He reserved them for consideration later, thinking it peculiar how she was attacked not long after he eased up on his surveillance over her. One could chalk it up to coincidence, but he suspected a more strategic and timed strike. The possibilities bothered him more than he'd expected, and a scowl formed on his mouth as he reprioritized his schedule for the next day, pushing the matter to the top.

Danvers muttered an oath when they reached the corridor leading to the Weatherly Hotel rooms, where an unrelenting series of anguished cries rang out through the walls. As soon as the haunting sounds hit his ears, he quickened his pace. A gaggle of people dressed in their pajamas obstructed half of the hallway and the closed entrance to Raine's room, adding to the commotion as they all demanded an explanation for the ungodly vocals in the middle of the night.

"What's happening in there?"

"It's almost midnight. My daughter is trying to sleep and recuperate from her illness."

"She's finally lost it. Someone put that she-devil out of her misery!"

"Has anyone contacted security to file a noise complaint?"

"There! Chief Harkness!"

He marched in front of Danvers and brought up both hands as soon as everyone began shouting at him at once. "Calm down and let us through. We're here now, so go ahead and return to your rooms. Security will take care of this, I promise."

A few residents objected, but most obeyed and dispersed enough to clear his path. He waved off the ones that lingered, including Vera and Bryan, who stood off to the side, looking worried. Father Clifford hovered nearby with a crucifix and Bible in hand, insisting that someone had called for an exorcism. Two more security officers eventually arrived from the stairwell and, under Harkness's direction, herded the rest of the onlookers away from the area.

"She was wailing earlier, but not this loudly," Danvers commented from behind him as the muffled cries turned to screams.

He checked the time on his optical interface while approaching Raine's door. "2320 hours… you waited over two hours to come get me?"

"We had it under control until the hallucinations started. Only when she became violent did I flag it as a security issue."

"What exactly is she hallucinating?"

Danvers stepped next to him, shaking her head. "You'll see."

His eyebrows drew together as he pulled on the door handle. The instant he opened it, the force of almost a hundred decibels slammed into his auditory receiver. He winced and adjusted his input levels as Danvers covered her ears from the screaming. Quickly shutting the door behind them, he surveyed the room.

The sight on the bed paralyzed him on the spot.

Raine thrashed around and fought against three of his burliest officers, yelling something he couldn't make out. Large bloodspots dotted the pillow and sheets as trails of red seeped from the bruised punctures in her arms, indicating veins ruptured by multiple needle stabs. She had been stripped down to her underclothes, and a layer of sweat matted them to her body. He took in her desperate movements, the clear note of torment in her voice. Her blue eyes stared straight up at the ceiling, wide with terror and blind to her surroundings.

Harkness jolted when she let out a screech and yanked hard on her left wrist, which was clutched by one officer trying to handcuff it to the bedframe. And when he failed to let go in time, they all watched, stunned, as she managed to flip a man twice her size clear across the other side of the bed. He collided with several medical poles carrying IV bags, and they all fell over as Dr. Preston, standing in a far corner and wearing earplugs, yelped his dismay. The show of strength boggled Harkness's mind, as none of his active readings pointed to a clear source of bionic aptitude in her anatomy.

Danvers ran over to assist the remaining two officers, but the security chief had seen enough.

"Move aside," he commanded, trudging forward. "She's not responding to mass restraint, so let me."

"No way," Danvers protested. "You saw what she did to Davis with just one arm."

"Trust me, I've got this."

It took a second of clashing glares, but she relented. Although his personnel attempted to comply with his instructions, Raine's flailing limbs made it difficult to simply back off. Once he leaned over the bed and took hold of her shoulders, everyone else released her at the same time. Like a wild animal set free, she tried to spring away. He tightened his grip and pushed her back into the mattress, enduring the clumsy swings of her fists and solid kicks against his armor. The power of her hits went off his charts, which forced him to amplify his own strength level as a countermeasure. Her incessant screams still came off as incoherent under the constant noise of her scuffling, and in order to understand the cause, he had to subdue her.

She may have proven herself uncannily strong, but he was stronger.

Ramping up his physical capabilities, he bore down on her and tried to capture her gaze. "Sinclair, snap out of it."

Raine cried out and pushed back against him, still lost in the waking nightmare that possessed her consciousness.

"Don't let her move her head too much," Preston hollered. "It might exacerbate any brain trauma I haven't found yet."

Harkness acknowledged the warning, but redirected his focus to something strange in her brain waves. Neurotransmitters fired off at rapid speeds, exceeding the typical synaptic activity of a normal human's. The phenomenon heightened her senses, elevated her blood pressure, and spiked her heart rate, factors that cut her off from reality. As he continued pinning her down, he analyzed the pulsing flashes of sensory output across her entire body. They filled his vision in consistent intervals, starting from her temples and flowing down to her torso and limbs. At first he believed them to be phantom stimuli that resulted from her head injury, but when he inspected her closer, he realized the main reason for her uncontrollable hostility.

Hallucinations or not, she was experiencing very widespread, very tangible pain.

"Hey," he tried again, lowering the timbre of his voice. "It's not real. Whatever you're going through in there, don't believe it."

While those words did little to mitigate her reflexive violence, his calming tone succeeded in bringing down the intensity of her vocalizations.

"…Eight-one-zero-one," she snarled, glowering straight through him. "Enough. I can't—seven-five-eight…"

Harkness maintained his exertive force on her shoulders even as her instinctive blows waned. "Sinclair. You're going to be okay, but I need you to get it together."

"…One-zero-one. Stop. I've already submitted. Seven-five-eight-one—it _hurts_."

"What is it you think is happening to you?" he muttered, uneasy about the glassy look to her irises. "You've got to pull yourself out of it. Come on. Hey. Focus on me."

"Seven… five… augh. Do what you want, then, but I _won't beg_!"

Falling deeper into the nightmare, she shoved him back in one rough motion and prepared to scramble away. The others blockaded the door, but Harkness seized her by the waist and yanked her toward him, tugging her off the bed and wrapping one arm around her struggling form. He grunted as he worked to immobilize her upright, placing his other hand on her forehead to hold the back of her head against his sternum. Her heels dug into the floor as she reached behind her and clawed at the skin of his neck and jaw, but he ignored the stinging to bring his lips close to her ear.

"You're safe. It's all right," he murmured. "No one's going to hurt you. Not anymore."

She remained deaf to his assurance, too consumed by her delusions.

"Sinclair."

"…Five-eight-one-zero…"

A tight sensation entered his chest at the unexpected vulnerability in her ramblings. "Raine."

Her thrashing abruptly died down at the sound of her name. An almost inaudible sob escaped her throat as she dropped her arms. "The pain… has never stopped."

They stood there in the deafening silence that followed, the atmosphere still thick and tense. Harkness gradually loosened his hold on her, and she slumped back against him as Danvers and the others relaxed their stances. He smelled the half-dried blood in her tangled hair, feeling the flyaway strands graze his chin when he rotated his face toward her right temple. A faint burn scar he'd never seen before marred the pale flesh there, usually hidden by her bangs. Bewilderment, sympathy, and a multitude of other emotions flooded his cortex, but he concentrated on initializing another scan to get a feel for the progress of her vitals.

In slow increments, all of her processes winded down to more standard levels. The stress and exertion seemed to take a toll on her body, for her knees started buckling, causing her to lean more weight on him. But rather than sink to the floor or return to the bed, she stayed where she was, with her head turned slightly to the side and her ear pressed against the front of his armor. He noted the cadence of her breathing, the way she appeared to listen for something.

He knew the others were waiting for the next step, but some unfamiliar inclination prevented him from moving. Having her this close, he saw everything but the monster he'd once made her out to be. She still operated as a mystery, a puzzle he had yet to solve, but after witnessing this display, he believed his understanding of her complexity had gone through a substantial improvement.

His readings picked up on another odd pattern to her physiology at that moment. Rhythmic, soothing. He observed her solemn expression, unable to place his finger on it until he identified a matching thrum beneath his own sternum.

Her heartbeat had synced with his.

Preston cleared his throat, breaking whatever spell had surrounded them. "If you could get her to lie back down, I would like to try this more potent sedative," he declared, removing his earplugs and raising a syringe. "It's crucial that I resume my examination of her injury soon."

Harkness nodded wordlessly, his handling gentle as he guided Raine back to the bed. She went along without trouble, almost meek in her cooperation. Once he had her in a reclining position again, he was about to ask her how she felt, but she interrupted him.

"I never wanted any of this."

At last, she shifted her line of sight to him, but the distant haze that persisted in her eyes told him she still hadn't mentally returned from the nether.

He sighed and crouched next to her, peering into her stormy blue gaze while Preston administered the sedative in her arm. "How is your memory? Can you state your name?"

"Subject number seven-five-eight-one-zero-one," Raine replied, speaking not to him, but to someone else in her imagination. "I don't have a name anymore. I'm just a number."

x-x-x-x-x

Harkness and Pinkerton watched as Danvers paced the length of the science lab, her demeanor growing more agitated by the second.

"What on earth has that girl been through?" she demanded to no one in particular. "I couldn't sleep at all this morning. Harkness, you recognized what that was, right?"

"Yes. In her delirium, she thought she was being tortured. At least, I'm pretty sure that's what was happening," Harkness remarked, rubbing the back of his neck. "The practice of repeating one's name or identification number under brutal conditions was once common among soldiers. A tactic to avoid giving information to the enemy." His forehead creased as he stared hard at the floor. "But Sinclair? Her history's pretty clear-cut out in the Wasteland, so that theory doesn't apply. What she did say was that she was a subject. A number."

Pinkerton scowled when both Harkness and Danvers glanced at him, already peeved about having to take time out of his day to participate in this impromptu meeting. "Why the hell are you two looking at me? I never did nothing like that to her."

"We just want to know if she's ever told you anything," Harkness said.

"What, you think that kid and I are best pals? I did one minor procedure on her to fix a gimpy hand before all this, and that's it," the scientist snapped. "She didn't even show up for work yesterday. I guess the whole head-bashed-in thing gives her an excuse, but we've never been chummy enough for her to tell me squat."

Harkness exhaled and leaned against a nearby desk. "So we'll have to wait for her to wake up before we get some answers, then."

"And maybe give her some time for counseling or something before you interrogate her," Danvers added sternly, coming to a halt in front of him. "Labeled as a subject number, being denied her own name… she's carrying around some serious trauma under that abrasive personality. I told you that you should've laid off on antagonizing her when she first moved here."

"I _did_ lay off. Eventually. Recently," Harkness amended, grimacing at the severe disapproval on his friend's face. "All right, I'll give her time, don't worry. And I'll check up on her once in a while during the recovery period. Are Preston and Vera Weatherly still alternating as her caregivers?"

"Yup. They're doing what they can between Raine and the ill patients." Her expression darkened, going somber at the reminder. "You two heard, didn't you? We got our first sickness-related death a few hours ago."

Harkness's mouth fell into a hard line. "Paulie Cantelli was an addict, so his immune system was already compromised. I just hope the other residents realize this before they start panicking and fleeing the city."

Pinkerton gestured to the flickering terminals and stacks of notes across the research area. "I've already started tracking the epidemic, as you can see. I still need blood and tissue samples from those afflicted, but tragically, I'm short one lab assistant to help me out."

Danvers sent him a vexed look. "Yeah, yeah. Just work on what you can until she's back on her feet. Need anything else, you let us know."

"Well, I'm gonna need your little science team to play fetch and bring me back those robots in the meantime," Pinkerton returned gruffly. "They been deployed yet?"

"They should be leaving the Citadel right about now," Harkness told him. "Ideally, we'd have a second team out there so they can alternate between retrieval and delivery, but numbers will always be a problem."

The scientist maintained his dour countenance as Danvers checked her watch.

"Recruitment might be something we could look into later. I've got to get ready for my rounds," she announced. "Going to need some coffee, but I've already assigned some of the senior officers to investigate Raine's assault, so the culprit shouldn't be at large for too much longer."

Harkness gave her an appreciative nod. "Right, great work. And thanks for alerting me to the situation last night."

"Sure thing." However, instead of striding to the exit, she hesitated and tilted her head, peering at him. "Say, Harkness. Given how intense Raine's actual strength was, how did you manage to restrain her by yourself?"

He stiffened and took a few moments to fumble for a response, catching a glimpse of Pinkerton's sneer out of the corner of his eye. "Er, knowledge of pressure points, weight distribution, momentum… you know, basic one-on-one maneuvers," he answered in what he hoped sounded like a casual tone. "Plus, she was already tired from grappling with the other guys."

Danvers mulled it over, studying him. "Hmm. That makes sense, I suppose. You just seemed to handle it with relative ease." She shrugged, heading for the exit. "See you later."

Harkness watched her stroll out of the lab, not budging from his position until the door closed behind her. He inwardly reprimanded himself for his carelessness in demonstrating his abilities, although revealing his true nature to his longtime friend had crossed his mind more than once. The timing just never seemed appropriate enough.

Once several beats passed in silence, Pinkerton rounded on him. "Nice cover there, A3-21," the scientist drawled. "I was wondering how you went about keeping your true identity concealed after you got your memories back."

Harkness frowned and straightened from the desk. "Don't push it," he warned, taking a step forward to stand over the shorter man. "Meeting's over. Get back to work."

Pinkerton leered back at him, the wrinkles in his face growing more pronounced. "While we're here, I've gotta bring something out into the open. It's about you."

The statement prompted a bout of suspicion. "Yeah? What about me?"

Pinkerton crossed his arms and walked a circle around him, as if examining a specimen. "Several weeks ago, when Raine first showed up at my workshop again, she mentioned that you were the one who sent her." A cunning quality entered his pale gray irises. "You did that on purpose, didn't you? Never had the balls to come yourself?"

Harkness sized him up, his body going rigid. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"Come off it. Last year, when Raine restored your memories, I knew it was only a matter of time before you came looking for answers. 'Why didn't you erase them like I asked you to?' Right?"

"I assume you had your reasons. A problem like Zimmer being one of them. She's the one who pointed that out, so count yourself lucky."

"All right, sure. But you wanted her to find out if you had any memories I _did_ erase," Pinkerton stated, ambling over to one of the desk chairs and taking a seat. "The answer to that is yes."

Harkness drew in a sharp breath. "So there _was_ something—"

"Let's give it a test," the scientist suggested. "I'm kind of curious about the long-term erasure results myself. You never gave me many details of your life back in the Commonwealth, but there was one name you kept mentioning without giving me context."

"What was it?" Harkness inquired, almost too eager for his liking.

"Saige."

A brief pause filled the lab.

"I don't recognize that name," Harkness declared, somewhat disappointed, after his data pool drew a blank.

Pinkerton regarded him thoughtfully for a few seconds. "Then I guess I succeeded on your actual memory wipe. Good to know I don't need to clobber you over the head to redo the job, eh?" he jeered, picking up a stack of notes to resume his work. "Oh, too soon?"

Harkness ignored the old man's dry chuckle as he turned to leave, flipping the name over and over in his head.

_Who's Saige?_


	10. Chapter 10

** In Electric Chains **

_The leather strip between her teeth held up against the force of her bite as every muscle clenched against the iron restraints binding her to the table. Sharp and hot, the electric current zapped from the electrodes fastened at her temples, assaulting every region of her brain and inducing another seizure. No intelligible thought manifested during these excruciating seconds, but somewhere deep inside, the wish for death echoed from the void._

_Abruptly, the shock ended, and she slumped back down on the hard surface like a ragdoll, weak and quivering. Saliva dribbled from the corners of her mouth all the way to her jaw as beads of sweat rolled from her forehead to her hairline. Sounds came back warped at first, but as her hearing reset, they reverted to normal. She stared up at the cold metal ceiling and took a deep breath, eyes watering from not only the strain on her body, but also the toll on her mind._

_A rough hand appeared and pried the strip from her teeth. “All right. Let’s try this again.”_

_The voice instilled a degree of fear within her. Calm but menacing, subtle but powerful. She continued to lie there, passive, as a large figure loomed over her and eclipsed the lights dancing in her vision._

_“What do you feel?”_

_In a distant corner of her subconscious, she recognized it as a trick question. “Innghh… donn…” she garbled, tongue still swollen. “Nnno—”_

_“Hmph. That won’t do.”_

_She tried to blink past her bleariness as the figure stepped away from the table to speak into the intercom._

_“Ms. Kendall, prepare the machine for another charge.”_

_A few moments passed before the hesitant reply came. “Already, sir? But she just went through four extended pulses in a row—”_

_“Unless you wish to return to your position in the maintenance department, act like a clinical intern and do as I say.”_

_After another pause, a sigh issued from the intercom speaker. “Well, okay. But I’m just saying. Three sessions in, and Raine is already blacking out and starting to have issues with her memory. Too much at once, especially at this voltage, might cause a lot of damage before we even attempt the augmentation phase.”_

_“I will take that chance, Christine. Prep the machine for another round.”_

_Raine struggled to make sense of the exchange as her surroundings came back into gradual focus. She glanced at the bare walls of the small examination room, instinctively searching for an exit even though escape was impossible. Tight shackles encircled her wrists and ankles while several thick straps dug into her abdomen and legs over her jumpsuit. She gave a half-hearted thrash against the restraining devices, which bound her like an animal at the mercy of another._

_The figure approached her side again, and she squinted up at his ominous silhouette, abhorrence and dread knotting together in her gut._

_Without warning, he reached out and grasped the top of her head, yanking it forward and forcing her line of sight to the projector screen at the opposite side of the room. Vague shapes stood out to her from the display, static and bright. It took a while longer for her eyesight to fully correct itself, and once visual clarity returned, she found herself looking at a candid picture of Freddie. The digital image glowed on the screen, showing him in the middle of a conversation in the atrium; something fairly commonplace. Before Raine could ask what significance this held, the projector switched to a photo of Jonas at his desk, and then to one of her father working in the clinic._

_Her throat tightened as she gazed at the weariness evident in James’s posture. They had held onto what they could of their familial bond, but this environment was a disease, and society had already gnawed away her ability to sustain connections with others. Even given the price, she had no regrets about protecting him in the only way she could._

_Better to sacrifice her own humanity than watch him suffer in her place._

_His image stayed up longer than the other two had, and she assumed the long duration meant the figure awaited her reaction. The sequence began to come back to her, a recurring hell that offered no way out unless she gave a correct answer. However, just as she prepared to inform him that she still recognized these people, the projector flashed again, and the transition triggered a stabbing sensation in her chest._

_Amata’s sweet smile hovered from the screen, depicting a moment captured during better days. It was the same picture Raine had once kept on her desk, and the sight reminded her all over again of yet another thing she’d lost. No matter how much resentment she harbored toward her former paramour for giving up on them so easily, she couldn’t shake the lingering feelings that still yanked her heart on a string._

_The grip on her skull tightened. “When you look at them, what do you feel?”_

_She winced at the pressure of his crushing hold and tried to think. A slight inkling of déjà vu roused her suspicion that they’d been repeating this all morning, but she no longer considered her memory or her intuition reliable. The shaking began in her fingers—from anxiety or motor damage, she couldn’t be sure. Only the oppressive atmosphere proved more tangible than anything as it closed around them, and although she had no idea what he wanted from her, she knew she needed to respond._

_“I…” She swallowed and forced the lump from her throat, working through her impaired speech. “These are all people I care about.”_

_The figure shoved her back down and ignored her pained grunt when the back of her head hit the table. “Sense still eludes you, I see. Clearly, this project is not working. But I have patience. I will_ make _it work.”_

_Out of the corner of one watering eye, Raine saw him give a signal to a two-way mirror next to the intercom. “Why are you doing this to me?” she rasped. “Why is this my punishment?” Somewhere in her fractured memory, she probably already knew the answer._

_He paused and then issued another signal to wait. Silence descended over the area as he stared down at her, his features still partly hidden by the angles of the lighting. She sensed the contempt in his demeanor, and suddenly recognition was restored—not by the sight of his face, but by the hatred festering in his core._

_“You dare to ask after everything you Sinclairs have done to my family?” the Overseer rumbled, leaning in close to breathe foulness over her. “Look at Amata. She spends her days confused and unhappy because of the sordid relationship you once roped her into.”_

_Raine grimaced, but maintained firm eye contact as it all came back. “I loved your daughter. What we had was real,” she spat. “You goddamn homophobe.”_

_The Overseer straightened then, sneering. “Stupid girl, is that what you think the problem was? Contrary to your fervent belief in my bigotry, I do not object to the rare occurrence of two women together.” His hand shot out and cupped her jaw, squeezing hard enough for his fingers to leave marks on her cheeks. “The issue lay in the fact that the woman Amata had chosen was_ you.”

_Raine jerked her face from his grasp, the impulsive motion sending stabs of pain shooting throughout her cranium. She registered his words, already knowing that something deeper spurred his loathing. It only brought her back to square one in her attempts to understand, as he still neglected to disclose exactly what she’d done to incur his everlasting detestation._

_His arm went up in the signal to the machine operator on the other side of the mirror._

_“You and your father have been a plague upon this Vault,” the Overseer declared, his mouth twisting into a sadistic smirk as the buzzing sound of charging electricity filled the air. “As physician, James is too valuable to subject to disciplinary action, but you…” he hissed in a voice that promised more to come in this agonizing nightmare. “_ You _are dispensable.”_

_Raine issued a strangled cry as the next current slammed into her through the electrodes, assailing everything she was, everything she could have been. Her teeth clamped down on her tongue, drawing enough blood to gush over her lips. In her last lucid moment, she forced her head to the side to avoid drowning in the liquids that pooled in her mouth. And then the convulsions spread like fire, taking over her body, taking away her control._

_As she shook in her restraints, a prisoner to the lightning in her veins, an integral part of her crumbled away. The resilience she’d depended on could hold up for only so long. Numerous links severed, warped, rewired. The flesh surrendered, the spirit abdicated. She felt it all, from the center to the surface, the destruction of something precious to the human psyche. The loss of a facet so crucial, so necessary to brave this perdition, went unheeded in its magnitude as she succumbed to the grisly night._

_When it finally ended, and she lay motionless and violated in the aftermath, the first thought that occurred to her was the project’s successful advancement._

_It had killed the last remnants of her will to survive._

_The Overseer came forward at that point, pitiless and cruel as he curled a fist into her hair and directed her recovering vision to the projector screen once more. “From now on, you are no longer Raine Sinclair, but Subject 758101. Now I will ask you again. Look at them. What do you feel?”_

_Raine peered at the sequence of the same four pictures, drooling blood and stomach acid that had come up during the seizure. They trickled down her chin as she regarded each image in turn, a vast emptiness looming where emotions once resided. She knew each individual, but as far as what she_ felt, _she found the task of associating_ feelings _impossible. Maybe they had been significant once, maybe she’d forgotten something vital, but now…_

_Not one stir from her mechanical heart._

_“Nothing.”_

_The Overseer released her, his lips stretching into a satisfied smile. “Good.”_

She woke gasping for air, pushing herself up into a sitting position and panicking when a harsh throb traveled outward from the back of her head. She lifted her fingers to tear off the electrodes, only to find thick layers of bandages wrapped around her hands like mittens. An enraged noise left her throat as she used her teeth to rip into the tightly bound material, refusing to accept her fate as a hollowed-out shell.

“Raine!”

The familiar voice cut through her frenzied state, and when she looked up, the surroundings brought on a rush of confusion. It was no longer the secret examination room, no longer the cold, pristine walls that contained her screams. She noted the relative softness of the mattress beneath her instead of the hard metal table she could have sworn was just there. Some sort of pliable brace around her neck limited her head movement, but it was far from the restraints that had kept her trapped. The stuffy, rank air clashed with the purified cooling vents she remembered, and as her gaze darted around the rundown interior, logic set in to chase away the rest of her delirium.

_Not Vault 101. Rivet City. My room. I’m still me. I’m…_

Her line of sight stopped at the foot of the bed, where a boy stood trembling, his big brown eyes welling up with tears. “Bryan?”

“You’re back!” he cried, vaulting onto the bed and flinging himself at her. He landed face-first into her abdomen, knocking the breath from her lungs as he threw his arms around her waist. “We thought you’d be in Crazy Land forever.”

Raine sucked in much needed air as he bawled into her shirt. She still felt disoriented and puzzled as to what was happening, but several hazy details slowly made their way into her memory. Much yelling came to mind, struggling, maybe a fight, a long fall down the stairwell, a crippling blow to the head—

“Ow!” she exclaimed belatedly, at last noticing the bandages secured around her skull. “What… what the hell happened? Did I get knocked into last year or what?”

Bryan managed to reduce his crying to sniffles and wiped his nose on her blanket. “Someone attacked you a few days ago and left you for dead at the bottom of the stairwell,” he wailed. “Commander Danvers found you, and Dr. Preston tried to help when they brought you in here, but you started screaming and trying to hurt everyone who came near. They said you were hallucinating. It was scary to watch.”

Raine’s palms went clammy at the revelation. “I was… hallucinating? For days?”

“Yeah, and you never told me how strong you were. You even beat up some other officers who tried to keep you down,” Bryan said, sitting back on his haunches across from her and rubbing his eyes. “I saw you send a man flying by just punching him.”

Alarm surged through her, and in an automatic movement, her hand went to her sternum. “I… didn’t mean to.”

In a blur, various images swarmed her brain, along with a vague grasp of her actions during the past two or three days. She had no explanation for the unsettling potency of her hallucinations, other than the prospect of the unseen strike having jarred open everything she’d worked to suppress. She wondered how much of her history she gave away, how much further she alienated the community. And as for the strength Bryan mentioned…

She stretched out an arm and felt the invisible current respond, wishing she had a simpler answer than the truth.

Upon glimpsing the bandages over her hands again, she asked, “What’s with this getup here? Doesn’t feel like I broke any of my fingers.”

“Dr. Preston had to wrap them to keep you from leaving deep scratches on yourself,” Bryan told her, pointing to her chest. “You wouldn’t stop.”

Raine glanced down and mumbled a curse. Under her low-cut neckline, she spotted the new crisscrossed gashes over the old ones. In various stages of healing, they ran from her clavicle to her solar plexus and horizontally just above her breasts. She sighed and brought up one bandaged hand to hold her forehead, a plethora of new anxieties overtaking the physical pain of her injuries.

“Wait, if I was so dangerous, why were you in here by yourself?” she demanded, suddenly realizing Bryan had been alone when she’d regained lucidity. “Vera doesn’t know you’re here, does she?”

He shrank beneath her withering stare. “You were quiet for the first time in days. I wanted to see if you were okay again.”

She glared at him for a moment longer, but then softened her expression, her anger dissipating at his genuine concern. “I’ll need to talk to Preston to see how long I’ll have to wear this thing around my neck, but yeah, I’d say I’m okay again,” she assured him, just glad to be here in the present. “I’m okay.”

“Great!” Bryan brightened considerably at that, a hopeful smile spreading over his face. “I should let Harkness know. He’ll be glad to hear.”

Raine stiffened, taken aback. “Harkness?” she inquired, reaching forward to touch the boy’s arm when he made to leap off the bed. “Why would Harkness care?”

Bryan blinked at her. “He’s been looking in on you morning and night when me, Vera, and Dr. Preston couldn’t. He’s the only one who’s as strong as you, and the only one who could calm you down when your fits got real bad.”

She tried to process that in a manner that made sense, but no matter how long she considered it, she found the idea absurd. “I’m surprised he didn’t just dig up a straightjacket and leave me to rot in here until I came to my senses.”

Bryan chuckled, obviously taking the pensive statement as a joke. “No way. I think he was really worried. He even fell asleep in that chair a few times whenever Dr. Preston gave you the sedative injection thing. He wanted to make sure you weren’t alone when it wore off so you wouldn’t be scared.”

Raine looked over at the desk chair that had been moved next to the bed, utterly baffled at Harkness’s involvement in her aftercare. Maybe, as the head of security, he wished to personally contain the threat she had posed while in that state? It made more sense when she thought of it that way, but another wave of fuzzy recollections challenged that notion. In clipped flashes, she recalled his constant presence, the iron lock of his arms around her during her worst nights, the calming words he spoke into her ear before she settled down and drifted off to sleep, and the sight of his slumbering form on the chair beside her when she awoke.

The hallucinations had warped the line between illusion and reality, but for some reason, beneath it all, a part of her had known Harkness was there.

She shifted in discomfort, attempting to dismiss the troublesome palpitations the memories caused in her chest. “I guess I’ll have to thank him, then. Or something.”

Bryan was already halfway to the door. “Okay, I’ll go get him!”

“Uh, that’s not necessa—okay,” she sighed, watching as the boy zoomed outside.

The ache in her skull increased at that point, and she gingerly touched the area, wincing at the tenderness. As much as she dreaded the impending awkward encounter with Harkness, she did want to know whether security had caught her assailant. The surprise blow to the head and subsequent fall had given her little opportunity to get a visual, but other than the twisted smile, one lurid detail stood out from the shadows.

A pair of glowing orange retinas.

x-x-x-x-x

As it turned out, Harkness intended to allow her some time to regain her bearings before visiting, or so the message went.

Several evenings later, Raine ventured out of her room and disregarded the doctor’s pleading for her to resume her bed rest, choosing instead to make her unsteady way down the corridor toward the science lab.

“I’ve been mentally stable for five days, but if I have to spend another hour in the horizontal position in that room, I just might go insane again,” she barked at the man following behind her, having to twist her entire torso around to send him an irritated look. “And for the record, I hate this neck brace.”

“Raine, listen to me. A head injury is not to be taken lightly,” Preston chastised, shaggy white hair mussed up from much frustrated scratching. “Even if your skull didn’t crack, you had a lot of bruising—”

“Relax, I’m just going to be sitting in front of a terminal for a while. Then I’ll go lie down and pretend to be a bored corpse again. Happy?”

“I’d really rather you be that bored corpse now. Wait, that did not come out right.”

Raine snorted, still ambling along as the doctor caught up to her. “Look, Doc, this coddling thing you’re doing? Ease up a bit. I’ve taken harder hits and fallen from higher places, and much to the entire Wasteland’s disappointment, I didn’t die. You’ve got real patients to take care of, so if I need you, I’ll crumple into a heap and start sobbing or whatever, and hopefully someone will go grab you for me.”

Preston adjusted his wire frame glasses and then took her arm, but only to help support her when she began to wobble a little. “Well, at least your infamous dry humor is still intact. Where is Vera when I need her to help me drag your disobedient rear end back to your quarters?”

“At dinner with Bryan in the marketplace,” she replied, smug. “What, you think I didn’t time this? I wasn’t going to make my great escape when you two could tag team me. And I’m just asking for an hour to be somewhere other than my bed or the bathroom.”

“You’re going to be the death of me. Why the lab?”

“Because it’s where I work? I just want to see if Pinkerton has any clerical shit for me to do. I won’t even lift a screwdriver if that makes you feel better.”

Preston frowned deeply, but refrained from further argument as he assisted her all the way to the science lab entrance. “One hour,” he said in a stern tone, wagging his finger in her face. “Then I want you back in bed, resting. Understood?”

“You got it.” After a pause, she added, “And thanks.”

He grumbled something about stubborn patients and then trudged toward the clinic, leaving her to her allotted hour of freedom. She exhaled in relief and wasted no time yanking on the door, her weakened muscles straining from the effort. The threat of atrophy on her body had motivated her to take the initiative and begin moving around, but much more troubling was the thought of her lost lab time while she wilted away under the doctor's orders. A mountainous heap of work awaited her, some of which only she possessed the knowledge to tackle.

Once she crossed the threshold and met the initial rush of cool lab air, a faint smell of metal and chemicals wafted up from below, accompanied by the clanking of glass beakers. Working through her vertigo, she went to the railing and used it to help steady herself as she regarded the flight of stairs leading down to the main floor area. The task seemed easy enough despite the limitations to her range of motion, so without further ceremony, she took the first step.

“What the blazing hell are you doing up and about?” came Pinkerton’s grating voice from somewhere around her five o'clock.

Raine turned and leaned half her body over the railing to spot him at his desk. “Hey, you should be commending my work ethic. Though I probably won’t be able to do much more than paper pushing today.”

The scientist hopped from his seat and stomped over, aggravated expression in place as he marched up the stairs. “They said you’d be out of commission for at least another few weeks.”

“Yeah, fuck that,” she retorted, taking the hand he held out when he reached her. “Preston gave me an hour. I just want to work on something that’ll get my mind off some stuff for a while.”

Pinkerton said nothing as he aided her to the floor level and across the research area. Only when he sat her at the chair in front of her desired terminal did he unleash a torrent of complaints about all the work he’d had to do in her absence, and how the science team had sent only one robot for reconfiguration thus far. She half-listened to his griping, peering at the black screen in front of her and wondering if she could convince him to give her some sort of data input assignment.

“Oh, and Harkness keeps bothering me about you,” Pinkerton snapped in the middle of his tirade.

Raine swung her gaze to him, giving him her undivided attention. “What? Why?”

“I guess he’s trying to play detective and figure out what you were going on about as some ‘Subject number seven-five-eight-or-other.’” Pinkerton scowled at her and shuffled closer. “I told him you’ve never told me squat, which is the truth. But old as I am, I ain’t senile, and I know electric burn scars when I see them.”

She flinched when he reached out to lift away the bangs that framed the sides of her face, revealing the marks seared into her temples.

“You should’ve let me surgically remove these things for you when I offered the first time,” Pinkerton remarked. “Harkness saw ‘em while you were in nut job mode, and now he’s curious. I know you get along with the security chief much like a deathclaw gets along with—well, anything—so unless you want him hanging around here while we’re trying to get our work done, I suggest you straighten him out and either give him the story or tell him to mind his own goddamn business. ‘Cause he won’t listen to me.”

As he released her hair and stepped back, she felt her jaw tighten. Why Harkness was pestering other people for information instead of simply confronting her, she had no idea, but the news of his delving attempts proved bothersome. She could understand if some of her delusional ravings were cause for concern to security, but Harkness’s relentless interest in her background gave her the impression that this was more personal. She supposed she should deal with it soon.

But how could she tell the chief of security that she was, to this day, a subject in electric chains?


	11. Chapter 11

** Darken to Black **

The prickly, restless feeling climbed up her back, heralding a wave of agitation that set her temper on edge. She cast a disinterested glance around the small office, hoping the show of boredom granted her an early dismissal. But when only silence persisted in the cramped interior, she let out an irritated noise and glared at the clearly uncomfortable novice priest sitting across from her.

"So… tell me again why I'm supposed to spend two days a week just sitting here and staring at you as if I have nothing better to do with my time," Raine snapped, propping up her chin with her palm as she slouched farther into the tattered sofa.

Diego glanced back and forth between her and his notes, appearing more and more uncertain of himself by the minute. "Um, it would be a lot more productive if you actually participated in the discussion by answering my questions, Raine."

"I've already told you people that I don't need counseling."

"Sorry, but many of the city's leaders disagree, and Father Clifford has entrusted me with this task. It really is for your own good," Diego said, although the look on his face pleaded with her to just go along with it. "After a couple of sessions, if I determine that your mental state has improved, the counseling will be complete, and we can end it there."

Raine let out a harsh bark of laughter and then fixed him with a steely expression. " _You're_ going to determine my mental state? Are you serious? You think you even have a shot at understanding everything that lives in here?" She tapped a fist against her head a few times.

As Diego opened and closed his mouth in an attempt to form a reply, she leaned forward and eyed him coldly. In actuality, she had nothing personal against the young man, but given how much railroading other people had been exercising over her life during her recuperation, the remainder of her patience had all but dissipated. Even more than Preston's overbearing medical care, she hated how a certain number of well-meaning individuals had volunteered her for a few useless yet "required" services that cut into her work hours, this one being the most irksome.

"Well, I might be able to help if you would confide in me about the root of your hallucinations," Diego insisted, shifting in his chair. "I heard some troubling things from Commander Danvers—"

"This is way out of your league, choir boy," Raine cut in, grinding two fingers against her temple. "There are things stored in this mind that would send you diving into a pile of Bibles and babbling a sequence of prayers. I'd rather not share them, and you're better off not hearing them. Try and play therapist all you want, but that just means we'll be stuck here forever in a staring contest no one's going to win."

Diego frowned, the deepening crease between his brows adding years to his normally youthful appearance. She saw the naiveté that lingered in his eyes, the sheltered perspective he continued to carry around. Someone like him would never comprehend the depth of her issues, but in truth, she preferred it this way, for the world sorely lacked kind and gentle spirits such as his.

He sat up straighter, lowering his notes as he regarded her with a somber countenance. "Raine, I've always been somewhat intimidated by you because you're—quite frankly—an unnerving person, but I will never forget your positive support for my induction into the priesthood all those months ago," he stated, his voice warm and sincere. "You may not know it, but you did something for me that has truly uplifted my life, and I only wish to do the same for you."

She peered back at him, unmoving. The veracity of her involvement with his career path had less to do with a genuine interest in his life's calling and more to do with preventing the underage Angela Staley from seducing and coercing him into a relationship by way of ant queen pheromones. Raine hardly possessed a track record of healthy relationships to speak of, but she knew firsthand how fast love like that could turn toxic, destructive. She'd recognized a disaster in the making and made the choice to intervene. And the fact that Diego was grateful to her without knowing the ramifications of her meddling only brought on a measure of contrition at the thought of the heartbroken girl's face.

"Listen, you're a good guy. You don't need to be exposed to all the awful shit that's happened to me," Raine declared, standing and rotating her neck, newly freed from the brace. Then, lowering her gaze, she added, "Or all the awful shit I've done, either."

"But—"

"Just blame me for walking out if Clifford or anyone else asks about the counseling," she told him, making a beeline for the door. "You can't help me. I gave up on help a long time ago."

_And even if I hadn't, there had never been anyone there to begin with._

"Okay. But let me try to explain something," Diego called after her, his tone suddenly firm.

She stopped, her outstretched hand inches from the door handle.

"You might think the entire population hates you, and that your health and state of mind don't matter. There are things you've committed that had me praying for your soul, though I hope most of them aren't true," he informed her, the metal legs of his chair groaning as he stood. "But what you need to realize is that there are people in this city who do care, and they know you're hurting. For example…"

_Don't you dare say Harkness._

"Chief Harkness—"

Raine dropped her head back in exasperation, eyes rolling toward the ceiling as Diego joined the pro-Harkness bandwagon. Harkness this, Harkness that, everywhere she went lately. It was almost as bad as having the man shadowing her again even though she still hadn't seen him in the past week and a half. Whether that counted as a blessing or a curse had yet to make itself known.

"I can understand if you don't want to open up to me, but maybe he's someone you can trust," Diego suggested after finishing his monologue about the security chief's alleged concern for her well-being. "He holds the residents' best interests at heart, and from what I've heard, he's been looking out for you in particular recently."

She sent him a dubious and unimpressed look over her shoulder. "I'll be sure to take that into serious consideration. On my death bed. Whenever that is. Right now, I'm gonna go fuck off somewhere that doesn't require me to tearfully relay my life story. So bye."

No further argument followed her out as she left the office and proceeded down the corridor. Had Raine known that the side effects of improving her relations with the city included dealing with people's newfound interest in her welfare, she would have stuck with her reclusive lifestyle and moved into Pinkerton's bow from the beginning, no doubt to his outrage. If she were honest, she really had no idea what to do with all this "caring" business. She'd lived the role of a pseudo-villain for so long that learning of others' worries over her—besides Vera and Bryan—threw her off balance. Not to say she preferred the active detestation, but this presented its own set of hassles.

_And Harkness… that guy's getting to be a real piece of work._

She shook her head and wandered past the Capitol Preservation Society, checking off a list of items to address now that she had escaped her counseling session for the day. Harkness aside, she had made no headway in cracking the mystery surrounding the suspicious terminal. Something in her gut warned her against leaving the matter alone, and it drove her crazy to spend her lab hours shuffling papers in its vicinity without finding an opportune moment to start her own investigative work. Despite her swift healing progress, Pinkerton still refused to assign her anything other than light, menial labor. On one hand, it might have been his way of showing her even he was conscientious about her recovery. On the other, it still came off as frustrating.

And then there was the obvious problem regarding her attacker's still-to-be-determined identity. She scowled at the floor as she continued walking, wishing security had managed to identify the culprit by now. Unless he or she happened to be a passing traveler with a penchant for violence, the lack of resident emigration in recent weeks pointed to the likelihood that the responsible party still lurked somewhere in this boat. Given the unusual facial characteristics, they should have been difficult to miss.

Raine slowed to a halt when the entrance to the stairwell came into view, realizing she'd automatically followed the normal route this time to the upper deck. Tension spread through her as the image of orange eyes and a sinister smile flashed across her vision. Since the incident, she had taken the long way to travel between the upper and lower decks, avoiding the site altogether. While the actual assault didn't haunt her, she harbored a moderate sense of dread about the location setting off an uncontrollable eruption of her past memories again. Preston had claimed the physical jolt to her brain as the cause of the hallucinations, but she barely trusted herself to keep her mouth shut while sleeping these days, much less step into a potentially triggering zone.

Even so, considerable self-contempt sprouted in the wake of her own cowardice, and she knew she needed to stop with the excuses and confront this unfounded fear. Forcing her legs forward, she glimpsed Cindy Cantelli's detached expression as the older woman appeared and passed by with another labeled box of her late husband's things. Raine thought of the sickness still making its rounds across the city, and if the afflicted individuals could give their all to fight it, then she could get over herself and take on this anxiety.

A rather dramatic bang resonated throughout the space when she kicked open the door and stepped inside. At once, her eyes settled on the spot where she'd landed from her fall, and she took the lack of relapsing images as a good sign. Lifting her gaze, she tried to envision the assailant at the railing of the next floor, still recalling only the two details she hadn't yet shared with anyone. Cautiously, she walked around the area, waiting to feel a change in her pulse or blood pressure. Nothing.

 _Good,_ she thought, pulling up her oversized tank top and relaxing. _Now I can move on from this bullshit._

But just as she prepared to ascend the flight of stairs to the upper deck, the door opened again, and in strode a familiar distasteful figure, visage as sullen as ever, but now with slightly asymmetrical cheekbones thanks to Raine's reflexive elbow jab from a month ago.

Trinnie froze mid-step upon spotting her, sunken gray eyes narrowing. " _You_."

Before, Raine thought of her as a repulsive child needing to be put in her place. Now, compared to everything else going on, Raine didn't even consider her worthy of acknowledgement. Saying nothing, she continued up the stairs.

However, the unsettling feeling she'd expected from entering the stairwell came to her now when the venomous words flowed from the girl's mouth.

"How's the head, bitch?" Trinnie hissed, taking the opposite flight of stairs leading down to the Muddy Rudder. "Getting the shit knocked out of you doesn't feel good, does it? Maybe you should think twice about who you fuck with from now on."

Raine paused long enough to catch the dark glower from below, witnessing the very real malice in Trinnie's face before she disappeared into the bar.

_Was that supposed to mean something?_

x-x-x-x-x

The disquieting encounter stayed with her as she approached her room, adding to the stress quickly racking up in her psyche. Raine no longer grasped a clear line between the threats and non-threats around her, as even formerly insignificant denizens now made themselves out to be questionable players in this mystery game. So many variables lay in wait as she dawdled, and it was only a matter of time before she stopped humoring her self-imposed caretakers with compliance and chose instead to act on her own.

She dug inside her pocket for her key, but as soon as she produced it, the sound of her name drew her attention toward the hotel lobby next door.

"According to your inference on the time of the attack, he had _just_ seen Raine beforehand, but he was here when it happened," Vera's voice stated. "I know he's your number one suspect right now, but it couldn't have been Sister."

"I'm finding that really hard to believe," retorted Danvers. "He was the last person to see her that evening before I found her, he wouldn't give us any straight answers, and we know he has beef with her. There were no firsthand witnesses, so don't you think he might have assaulted her and _then_ come in here?"

Raine slipped her key back into her pocket and made her way over to the entrance of the lobby, peeking inside.

"I wouldn't defend him if I suspected he was guilty," Vera told the security officer, now sounding cross. "I don't even like the man, but he's innocent in this case. I'm sorry that's not what you want to hear, Lana."

Danvers stood opposite from her on the other side of the front desk, hands gripping the edges, stance overbearing. Preston hovered nearby and murmured something to the two women, gesturing to the clipboard he held while acting as some sort of mediator. From the table to the right, Bryan and Pinkerton watched the heated argument, both absently stirring their utensils in the bowls of food in front of them.

Raine cleared her throat and stepped into the premises. "Plot twist: it was a sentient mirelurk whose brother I had chopped up and fed to a yao guai, and this was its failed attempt at revenge and glory against the dreaded Lone Wanderer from 101."

On cue, everyone's eyes swung to her.

"Hi, Raine!" Bryan greeted, breaking the taut atmosphere as he waved.

Danvers swiveled around and pinned her with an austere expression. "Aren't you supposed to be at counseling with Diego right now?"

"Nope," she returned, sauntering toward the desk. "That was some annoying shit you signed me up for, so I left early. Now what am I missing over here? I'm the one who got clonked in the head, so shouldn't I be part of this powwow or something?"

"Join in, by all means," Pinkerton piped up, bringing a mug to his lips. "This is just free entertainment for me during my lunch hour."

"Yeah, okay. And you, Doc. Don't even start about me overexerting myself," Raine said the instant Preston opened his mouth. "I'm interested in hearing about security's leads so far on the suspects. No one's even bothered talking to me about it."

Danvers sighed and massaged her forehead. "I didn't want to throw questions at you until you were back at a hundred percent."

"I'm probably at ninety-eight, so is that close enough?" She could almost feel the disapproval emanating from all three adults standing around her.

"Raine, listen," Vera began, leaning on her elbows against the surface of the desk, "You should know that I, more than anyone, want justice for you, but—"

"But Ms. Weatherly here insists it's not the ex-slaver who has threatened you on numerous occasions," Danvers interrupted, glaring sideways at the hotel manager.

"Well, I'm sorry, but I can't implicate a man I know isn't responsible," Vera snapped. Turning back to Raine, she went on, "We actually heard the impact of your fall from here, but we thought it was someone accidentally dropping another case of Aqua Pura during the last shipment. I wouldn't conceal any kind of crucial information that would help you."

Danvers huffed impatiently. "Every piece of evidence we have points to—"

"It wasn't him," Raine announced, bringing an end to the debate. As much as it pained her to let Sister off the hook, identifying the true assailant was far more important. "Yeah, he's an ass, but whoever dealt the blow was able to sneak up on me. Sister moves and acts like a super mutant, only twice as stupid."

The look of sheer dismay Danvers shot her incited a bout of amused chortling from Pinkerton.

"Need to work on your detective skills, eh, Lana?"

Danvers ignored him and started to ask Raine something else, but her gaze flickered over the younger woman's shoulder as a new presence entered the lobby.

"Well, is there anyone specific you think might have done this?" a familiar gruff voice inquired.

Raine's teeth clamped together as she stiffened and rotated to face the bane of her existence. "Yeah. Everyone not currently in this room."

The moment her line of sight landed on Harkness, a staggering wave of nervousness swept over her, bringing a slight tremor to her fingertips. She pictured him in her room, next to her bed, asleep in the chair, restraining her, comforting her, defending her from the demons set free when her subconscious betrayed her. All of it came rushing in, insistent and unyielding, until the eye contact she tried to maintain broke down as he stalked closer. She glanced away and stuffed her hands into her pockets when he stepped in front of her, still unable to accept the verity of his support during her weakest hours.

"Danvers, I thought you'd assigned this case to some of the other senior officers," Harkness remarked after peering at Raine for several uncomfortable seconds.

"Well, I went ahead and picked it up myself when they failed to bring in any results," Danvers replied, frowning. "I thought I had a lead on Sister, but it just got shot down. Pretty disappointing. She says she's ready for questioning, though, if you want me or one of the others to start on that soon."

Raine feigned interest in the metalwork on Mister Buckingham's exterior as Harkness hesitated in answering. Preston excused himself to return to the clinic while Pinkerton gathered his dishes and strolled out, muttering a snide comment about how the show was over now that the buzzkill security chief had come in. Raine fidgeted with the keys and caps in her pockets, debating whether to crawl back to her counseling session after all in order to remove herself from Harkness's vicinity. The awkwardness she felt around him bordered on unbearable; if only she could return to simply detesting him on principle, but his presence during her dark episodes had disrupted the order of things.

"No, I'd rather have you overseeing the patrols, but keep a lookout for any other potential leads," he told Danvers. "I'll take over from here."

"What?" Raine demanded in alarm. "Don't you have a city to run? Let someone else handle the case. I'm cooperating willingly, so…"

But with one motion of his head, Harkness dismissed Danvers, and she gave him a reluctant nod before striding away. Raine stared after her, somehow feeling like she'd just lost one of her lifelines. Then, to compound her apprehension, Harkness gestured for her to follow him.

"You look like you have some free time," he declared, waiting for her to budge from her spot. "Let's get this initial questioning process over with."

"But, um…" Raine struggled to come up with a feasible reason to refuse despite the fact that this posed the best opportunity for setting the record straight with him and his snooping. "I've gotta give Seagrave his radio now that I have it all fixed."

"Oh, I can deliver it for you!" Bryan volunteered, fishing out her spare room key from the front pocket of his overalls as he jumped to his feet.

Raine blanched. "No, I should be the one to—"

"Don't worry, I got it. You should take care of the investigation stuff," the boy said, chest swelling with a clear sense of helpfulness.

As she watched her only excuse fly out in a blur of overzealous energy, Vera laid a hand on her shoulder.

"Go on. The sooner you can get the interrogation of the way, the better," the hotel manager assured her. "Then you should really concentrate on healing. I'd be a lot happier if you listened for once."

Raine let out an exaggerated sigh. "Fine." She shifted her unhappy stare to Harkness, who exhibited far more patience with her than usual. "Lead the way, then, Chief."

The long journey to the security quarters ended up proving everyone's point regarding her compromised endurance, much to her chagrin. By the time they reached his office, she was winded, dizzy, and sweating, but damned if she admitted to any of it out loud. Although she knew Harkness could read her physiology, she ignored the telltale chaos in her vitals as she stomped to the armchair in front of his disorganized desk and plopped down on the lumpy cushion, glaring into the opposite wall.

Harkness shut the door and took a minute to remove his plasma rifle from his back and lean it against a set of dented lockers. He said nothing as he came over to clear a spot on his desk, stacking various files together at one end, and Raine wondered if his slow, methodical movements were done on purpose to prolong her discomfort around him. She studied him in the ensuing quiet, once again overwhelmed by visual clips of his involvement during her hallucinations. As he lifted a heavy load of papers and transported them to a nearby chair, she saw the sculpted musculature in his arms, his biceps taut and flexed in a way that sparked a faint reminder of the number of times he'd had to hold her down.

Raine swallowed, her breathing suddenly going shallow. She recalled brute strength versus brute strength, the physical difference between human and machine markedly displayed with every pin he'd done on her, every lock of her limbs beneath his own. She was now aware of the necessity, of the danger she had posed to herself and to others, but the ease with which he had clutched her, restrained her, overpowered her—

She tried to stifle a low whimper as a pounding headache began and traveled outward from the site of her injury. Harkness stopped his organizational efforts to glance in her direction. She hid her grimace and turned to the side, one hand coming up to gingerly touch the escalating pain in her skull.

"You all right?"

Only a grunt served as her response.

He sat on the surface of his desk and leaned forward so that a mere few feet separated them. "Want me to take a look at it?"

Raine's gaze snapped to him. "No. Just… don't do anything else for me. I'll be fine."

He scrutinized her, face impassive, as something curious and unspoken hung in the air. A subtle alteration permeated the space between them; she sensed it, shied away from it, too discomfited to learn what it meant. The things she could say at that moment spanned a mile, but as she tried to decide which to start with, he straightened in his sitting position.

"You hate being around me, don't you?" he inquired outright, much to her surprise.

Raine fumbled for a suitable reply before scoffing. "Really? What was your first clue?" she tried to drawl, but winced when the headache abruptly evolved into a migraine. "I've only been trying to stay away from you ever since I moved to the city."

Harkness remained expressionless as she defaulted to hostility, a state she preferred when interacting with him. Deep down, she knew it was only a defense mechanism by this point, as gratitude for his actions secretly existed alongside her antipathy. She thought of Diego's recommendation to trust the security chief, yet her reservations endured. While Harkness had garnered favorable points for a number of reasons, becoming receptive to him bordered on impossible, for she found herself at a loss every time she had to contend with his eyes.

"Can we just get on with it?" Raine mumbled after a few beats of silence. "How does this work? I give you a recap of what I remember before the attack?" She debated mentioning Trinnie's suspicious words from earlier, but decided against crediting the girl with anything remotely noteworthy, murder attempt or otherwise.

Harkness braced his forearm on his thigh in a casual pose. "Generally, yes, we'd start off with your account, record it, and see if it opens any missed doors in the case. But there's something else I'd like to cover first. You can probably guess what that is."

Raine bristled, her temper flaring now that the subject was out on the table. "Yeah, I hear you're the one who had to deal with me while I was half-crazed during some rough nights. And a certain geezer said you've been asking about things that really aren't your business," she bit out, drawing herself up as all the associated vexation poured forth. "I'm telling you now to forget it. I didn't ask you to look after me. I'm not some research project that your confused android mind needs to resolve, and I sure as hell don't owe you an explanation for whatever you heard me blurt out. So quit prying."

A frigid quality infused the office even as her internal temperature spiked with ire. She silently challenged him to counter, prepared to defend her rant with further justified indignation. As much as she recognized the value of his support, her past was her burden—a line he had no right to cross, a realm where he didn't belong.

Consternation darted across his features, but his tone remained controlled as he said, "Fair enough. We'll proceed with the report, then." However, instead of backing off right away, he leaned toward her again. "But here's the thing…"

A sharp intake of air nearly choked her when he reached out and ghosted his fingertips over the scars, recent and older, on her chest. She went rigid, both infuriated by his nerve and startled at the conflicted look that entered his eyes as he stared at the marks. It occurred to her that he'd had to witness the infliction of the new ones when her nails had raked into her flesh, the act a remnant of some past madness that had relapsed under her hallucinogenic state. And when his knuckles brushed against her skin as he took hold of the front of her loose-fitting shirt, heat surged into her core, and not entirely from rage.

"If you don't want me prying," he murmured, shifting up her neckline, "cover these up."

Raine gaped at him as he retracted his hand, incensed and baffled, but strangely not repulsed.

Harkness picked up a nearby file bearing a label with her name, opening it to the first page but peering up at her all the while. "And whoever Freddie is," he added, the shadows deepening over the planes of his face, "I hope he's answered for whatever he's done."

x-x-x-x-x

She thrived in the darkness to a certain extent, the absence of fluorescent lights a welcome reprieve from the hell she lived day in and day out. The mattress creaked as she rolled onto her back, some disturbance bringing her out of her deep sleep. She settled further into her blankets, eyelids still shut as fatigue pulled her consciousness back toward slumber.

And then it happened again—a tangible, feathery touch that glided from her ankle up to her inner thigh. She recognized the opportunity and urged herself toward the dream, halfway registering that this could lead somewhere desirable if the nocturnal partner turned out to be a woman. So starved was she for female sexual intimacy that she would even agree to submit as the bottom participant in this scenario. A second hand made contact, this one tugging down the elastic waistband of her shorts. It felt almost real when eager fingers slipped into her underwear and stroked her, enticing a breathy moan that may have surfaced in the physical world.

The ministrations became clumsy and rough as the other's full weight joined her on the bed, and in a moment of lucidity, she wondered why she couldn't have dreamed up a more experienced lover. Regardless, her body writhed in response, wanting and needing someone else's touch. She curled both fists into the blanket as a thumb took on a circular motion over her clit, and her legs spread wider of their own accord as burgeoning arousal rocked through her.

She required neither a name nor a face, only the feel of another whose body she could also explore.

But when she reached up to seek out an identifying feature, a vicelike grip clamped over her wrist and pinned it down next to her head. Perturbed and displeased, she struggled against the show of force, never having liked any sort of rough play, especially if it had her in a restrained and submissive position. A heavy body then descended over hers, and the grip on her wrist tightened further as the fingers tending to her lifted away to yank down her shorts and underwear.

She realized something was wrong when a pelvis settled between her thighs, and as soon as she felt the tip of something hot and throbbing press against her opening, the encounter went from a dream to a living nightmare.

Panic consumed her as she jolted awake, but the disorientation lingered, and the darkness hid the offender. He moved his hand from her wrist to her mouth, using his elbow and sheer mass to try to overpower her. Her hips shoved upwards in an attempt to buck him off, but he only growled and bore down harder as he lined himself up and began to push into forbidden territory.

In desperation and fury, something inside her snapped.

Raine's vision went red, several dormant traits activating in response to the threat. Power surged from her center to her limbs, and with unchecked strength, she levered herself up to wrestle him off the bed. They both tumbled to the floor, knocking a vanity mirror from her dresser on the way down. Glass shattered next to them as they rolled onto each other, and she tackled him when he tried to scramble away. Pulling her shorts back up, she straddled his stomach, only to hiss out an expletive when one of his fists caught her lower lip, splitting it. Although she had trouble seeing his blind swings in the dark, her physical resilience had increased tenfold. With one hand, she grasped him by the throat and slammed him down, the sound of bending metal filling the room as his head dented the hard surface.

"I said _no_ , Freddie!" she bellowed, the outraged vocalization rocking the walls. With one swift movement, she switched on her Pip-Boy flashlight and shined it into his face.

However, the individual staring wildly back at her wasn't Freddie, but none other than Sister.

Reality and sense of time crashed over her at once, dispelling the remaining haziness as he made choking noises from her grip around his neck. Ignoring his plight, she scanned her room. Yet again, she'd mistaken the setting for Vault 101. While her relocation to Rivet City had intended to emulate the caged environment of the Vault, some other facet had been wedged open, one with the potential to jeopardize the psychological stability she'd worked so hard to rebuild. Whatever that blow had done to her head, she could no longer disregard the repercussions. And yet, one thing struck her about this instance.

She had said no. The disparity between her reaction before and her reaction now suggested that not all was lost, that she had not reverted to the shell of a girl called Subject 758101. And when it came to sexual assault, at least she hadn't fallen victim twice over.

Because when it happened nearly a year ago, she'd been too far gone to resist.

Suddenly, a piercing sensation shot through her left side. Raine gasped and released her grip as Sister pulled out the long glass shard he'd just stabbed below her ribs. All sound died down in a warped decrescendo as she peered at him. In the luminescence of the flashlight, his countenance appeared as shocked as she felt, hinting at no premeditated intent to seriously injure her; only a consequence of his frantic need to break her hold. Even so, it was too late for him to expect any weakness. She seized his jaw and nearly crushed the bone structure in her palm, leaning in menacingly as she caught her own reflection in the bloody shard he still wielded.

Her eyes, already deep blue in color, darkened to black.


	12. Chapter 12

** The Scars in Her Eyes **

_"In a few days, I'll be a free man… a new man. Let me say thank you now, for referring me to Pinkerton at Rivet City, because I will not remember any of this soon."_

Harkness stopped the holotape and leaned back in his chair, exhaling. He swept his gaze over the assortment of transcripts and audio recordings littering his desk, all evidence of his life as the synth A3-21, procured and bestowed to him the previous year by the last person he had thought would help him. The clock on his interface revealed he'd wasted approximately two hours of the night shift poring over the classified materials. For all the information they contained, however, not one mentioned the name Saige.

He stretched and then leaned forward to gather the holotapes and return them to his office safe. Digging up a past he'd once attempted to discard did seem to carry some unseen risks, but Pinkerton's confession had sparked his curiosity. While his other memories had been suppressed, why were the ones associated with this Saige person erased? For Pinkerton to isolate those and agree to eliminate them, they must have carried significant gravity, even without Harkness providing any context.

Locking away the materials again, he tried to refile the matter to secondary storage in his system, but it persisted in his active list of tasks as if urging him to continue seeking the answer. If anything, he wished to learn what it was about that individual that had warranted a complete data wipe. For all he knew, Saige may have held clues that would help him avoid future hunting attempts by the Synth Retention Bureau. Retrieving the lost data posed a challenge, but he intended to find a way around it. A possible key lay buried, and this was his freedom at stake.

At that moment, a sudden series of vibrations rippled through the surfaces of the city, cutting into his musings. He clamped onto the edge of his desk until they subsided, his hackles raising when he recognized the accompanying vocal eruption.

_Sinclair._

Harkness jumped to his feet and almost rushed out the door before his rational side could catch up, all thoughts of his history getting shoved to the background. He halted halfway across the office when the logic set in, pulling up his tracking matrix to first pinpoint her location. A scan over the upper deck found her room empty. He widened the search across the entire city, his brow furrowing as he scrolled back and forth across each level for any sign of her.

Finally, he paused when an orange indicator matching her dimensions blipped on the midship flight deck. Zooming in on it, he spurred into motion when he spotted a second indicator retreating from hers and inching close to the edge. A fall would result in either a long swim across the mirelurk-infested waters or death on the sharp debris below.

_What the hell has she gotten herself into now?_

As he stormed through the bridge tower, he browsed his memory bank and tried to recall whether the rotational watch on Raine was still in effect. While she hadn't purposely caused any recent debacles, both he and Preston remained wary of her questionable mental stability. He had long stopped guessing what to expect whenever a matter involving her required his attention, but considering her current position at the splintered deck above the broken bow of the ship, he had little doubt he'd be in for an unpleasant surprise.

Several of his personnel in the common area prepared to accompany him as he flew by, but he told them to stay put, intent on handling the situation with as few people as possible—preferably just himself. If he'd learned one thing about confrontations with Raine in recent weeks, it was that larger groups resulted in more casualties, whether she intended them or not. Although he couldn't very well reveal why he alone could take her on, he hoped the residents trusted in his leadership enough to refrain from questioning him.

His boots pounded across the metal floor as he made his way down to the stairwell, the chorus of inquiring voices swelling from the direction of the upper deck. He drowned them out by pushing open the door leading to the front bridge of the city, breathing in a lungful of dusty night air as he shut it again behind him. Eyes automatically adjusting to the low light intensity, he saw the night watch officer already fumbling around in his pockets for the key to the marketplace entrance.

"I'll take care of it. Just get back to your station," Harkness ordered, waving him back.

"But Chief, I thought I felt an earthquake or something. From just inside, strangely enough."

Harkness shot him an impatient look and brushed him out of the way to unlock the marketplace himself. "I'm better equipped to deal with this. Stay here and don't come in unless you feel another round of tremors."

"You sure? What's going on?"

"A problem I'm going to fix right now. Hang tight." Without giving the other man any time to argue, he slipped inside the marketplace.

The door banged closed and echoed throughout the vast, dark interior. Harkness activated his night vision and surveyed the area, seeing nothing out of place amongst the closed shop stalls. However, as soon as his gaze roved to the left, he gaped at the extensive infrastructure damage that stretched from the upper deck's connecting entryway all the way to the flight deck at the opposite end of the hangar. Bent metal pieces lay strewn around that section of the premises. He glimpsed the stairs and railings—all either dented, twisted, or punctured—and a pulsing vein bulged from his neck as he considered the cost of repairs.

His matrix flashed at him at that moment, reminding him of the primary issue at hand. Trudging forward, he took note of the chemical tracers in his interface, which picked up on the spatters of blood that accompanied the trail of destruction. He quickened his strides across the marketplace, hearing nothing from the flight deck, but willing to bet someone was dying or already dead.

Before he made it to the landing, the door to the hangar deck creaked open.

Harkness stopped in his tracks to whirl around, exasperated. "Stay clear of this area," he called out. "Security's already looking into the matter."

Instead of complying, someone's heavy footsteps approached.

"Hey, Chief," Flak's tired, rough voice replied as he flicked on a flashlight and turned it on himself, his wrinkled attire looking hastily thrown on. "Nah, I gotta be here. I was supposed to be keepin' an eye on him."

"Who?"

"Are they on the flight deck? Come on. She might've killed him already," the grizzled arms dealer stated, walking past him.

Bewildered and annoyed, Harkness followed him up the ruined set of stairs and emerged onto the flight deck.

There, at the edge over the water, Raine stood with her back to them, the glow of the moon casting her in an eerie silhouette. Using a single arm, she dangled an unidentified man by the neck several inches off the ground. Gurgling noises issued from his throat, and Harkness detected his depleted levels of oxygen as her hand came close to crushing his windpipe. One glance at her disheveled clothing and aggressive stance told the security chief all he needed to know about what had likely transpired to lead to this.

"She damn sure turned the tables on you, Sister," Flak remarked, stuffing a hand into one pocket and leaning against a steel column. "What did I say about messin' with that girl? The powerhouse rumors weren't for nothin'."

"You knew he was planning something?" Harkness demanded as he sent him a suspicious glare.

"I overheard him saying he wanted to take advantage of her as payback for breaking his nose."

Harkness scowled as he turned back to the situation at the ledge. Venturing a cautious step toward the pair, he saw the blood soaking through the side of Raine's shirt. "Whoa, ease up there, Sinclair. If you kill him, I'll have to take you in for murder."

He expected some sort of standard snappy comeback, something like, _"So arrest me in a minute,"_ before she went ahead and did the opposite of his wishes. Instead, she gave no response or even any indication that she'd heard him. She remained locked in her position, unrelenting as the consciousness and life drained away from her struggling quarry. Harkness edged closer, reaching out to touch her shoulder.

"Sinclair."

Slowly, she rotated her head to look at him. Even in the dark, he noticed something off about her countenance. The alteration was subtle; all spatial measurements of her features remained unchanged, but the way they were positioned appeared blank, emotionless. As if she had shut down. He hesitated at the oddity of it. The lack of a facial expression seemed somehow… inorganic.

Synthetic.

"All right, put him down," he tried, watching for any signs of an oncoming meltdown even though his intuition told him this differed from anything he'd seen before. "He's not worth landing yourself in trouble again. Not after all the progress you've made."

She merely turned away as Sister managed to kick her in the ribs, which elicited no verbal reaction. Instead, she shifted him even closer to the long drop down. Harkness's fingers went from her shoulder to her chin, forcing her face back toward him.

"I know you're living with a lot of inner pain, and it's hard to stay grounded when you keep all of it inside to fester. But I need you to fight through it. Not even for this son of a bitch's sake," he said, sparing Sister a harsh glower. "But because you're worth more than this. I need you to come back, Raine."

A faint flicker of acknowledgement shone through the mask, growing through the fractures until her lips parted to convey understanding. Almost at once, life returned to her visage, and she blinked several times as if snapping out of a trance. Harkness lifted his palm to her cheek to test her temperature, but without thinking, he brushed his thumb over her clammy skin as he read her body's degrees in Fahrenheit.

Abruptly, her arm almost crumpled from Sister's weight. Harkness caught him by the front of his shirt before he plummeted below, flinging him like a ragdoll into the side wall of the flight deck. Upon crashing to the safety of the floor, the despicable man gasped for air, lying on his side while Flak came over and nudged him with the toe of his boot.

"Serves you right being a piece of shit," Flak muttered. "Babysitting you has been the biggest pain in my ass."

Raine had sunk down to her knees, eyes downcast. Her shoulders quivered as she rubbed her arm. Harkness crouched at her side and examined the new gush of blood pouring from the wound beneath her shirt.

"Come on. Let's get that patched up," he murmured, taking her elbow to begin helping her up.

As she complied wordlessly, Flak reached down and hauled a still-winded Sister to his feet.

"What do you want to do with this?" he asked Harkness.

The security chief glowered at Sister as he wrapped his arm around Raine's waist to help support her. " _That_ is getting thrown out of the city."

"You sure we can't just chuck him off the ledge here? Raine might've had the right idea."

"As appealing as that route is at this time, I have to go by the book. Take him to the security officer at the front entrance. He'll make sure he walks his sorry ass across the bridge and doesn't come back. And I want to speak to you in the morning about this matter."

"Sure. I'm just glad I won't have to keep tabs on this shithead anymore."

As Flak dragged Sister, struggling, back inside the hangar, Raine rooted herself in place when Harkness attempted to guide her forward.

He peered at her, trying to see through her curtain of black hair as she stared at the ground. "Can you walk? Need me to carry you to your room?" he inquired, concerned that her new injury may require more urgent care.

She mumbled something indiscernible.

"Could you repeat that?"

When she lifted her gaze to him, the moonlight reflected off the blue of her irises, and for a fleeting moment, he saw the full depth of the scars in her eyes.

"That was the first time I could control it," she told him in a hoarse whisper. "Because of you."

x-x-x-x-x

"Yeah, me and Shrapnel got real suspicious after that first attack on her," Flak declared, folding his arms over his chest as he watched the science team at work on the floor below. "Sister had been runnin' his mouth about making her pay for something that was probably his fault in the first place. To top it off, the scumbag said he'd aim for it to happen while she was still recovering. I've been tracking his movements, but I messed up last night when I fell asleep. Good thing she ended up showing him what for."

Harkness frowned, drumming his fingertips on the railing of the stairs. "She still insists he wasn't the one who assaulted her at the stairwell, but in her official report, she did mention catching him searching for something in Zimmer's old room about ten minutes before the incident. Would you happen to know anything about that?"

Flak shook his head. "No, I only started tailing him the day after she got attacked. Sounds sketchy as fuck, though. You get your boys to do a sweep job over that room?"

"Yeah. We found some huge hole we hadn’t seen before carved in one of the walls, but there wasn’t anything in it." Harkness rolled his neck in an attempt to relieve the tension. "Well, thanks anyway for your time. Those were all the questions I had."

"No problem. I'll be around if you need anything else. And Raine? She's got a controversial rep and some weird bionic shit going on, but she ain't a bad kid. Might just be the reformed ex-slaver in me talkin', but you can tell a lot about a person's character if you look hard enough."

Flak made his exit with those parting words, and Harkness nodded to himself in silent agreement.

He leaned on his forearms over the railing, observing the activity in the science lab. Despite sporting fresh stitches in her side, Raine worked in a bent position over the most recent Protectron the team had brought in. Pinkerton hovered around her every few minutes to give unnecessary instructions, which she only argued with. At the other end of the research area, the newly returned Daniel Agincourt made an irritated noise over his circuit board and asked in a loud voice if they could lower the volume on their bickering. One of the doors on the first floor level banged open before either Raine or Pinkerton could answer, and they all paused as Garza and Alex Dargon, back from retrieval duty, dragged in an intact Mister Gutsy.

Harkness kept his sight trained on Raine, who stood up and wiped her hands on a rag as she strode forward to examine the new unit. He sensed the stiffness in her gait, the tightness in her features as she tried to disguise the pain of her stab wound. One had to admire her adherence to her work. For someone who had gone through a number of consecutive rough patches in such a short amount of time, she maintained steadfast focus on her responsibilities. Whether that demonstrated a steel will or a knack for self-distraction, he didn't know, but the fact that she still functioned enough to stay productive impressed him more than he could say.

Suddenly, their gazes met when she glanced up and spotted him on the second level. He inclined his head and straightened to leave, but she said something to Pinkerton and tossed down her rag before making her way toward him. Harkness watched her curiously as she climbed up the stairs, her usual tools clanking together on her belt. When she reached him, she hesitated for an awkward moment and then gestured to the door. He followed her outside, a bit bemused since this marked the first time she had ever sought him out of her own volition.

"Did you need me for something?" she questioned once they stood alone in the corridor.

Harkness studied her strained expression, which hinted at her typical discomfort around him. "No, I was just checking in on the team's progress. The retrieval branch has been working nonstop, but it looks like you guys in revival are also getting a lot done."

Given the slow process of the project, his assertion was generous, and they both knew it.

"Yeah, but at this rate, we'll run out of water before we even have enough robots up and running. Bringing Daniel and the other guys back from the Jefferson Memorial helped, but we're still short on hands," she sighed, fidgeting with a wrench hanging by her hip. "I'll be honest. This whole thing could've been avoided if I'd agreed to help the Brotherhood escort the caravans myself in the first place. You know, instead of running away and gracing you all with my 'dazzling' presence."

His eyebrows rose. "Really?"

"I mean, you've seen what I can do," Raine remarked, cringing. "But I chose to hide out. It's just… it's complicated. I don't want to be out there in the Wasteland right now. Project Purity, everything that happened last year—it all took a lot out of me." She stopped to take a deep breath, as if steadying her nerves. "I guess this is my way of trying to put together the explanation I owe you."

Harkness regarded her in silence, his internal processors working in overdrive in response to this slight turnaround. She appeared uneasy and perturbed, which made him that much more appreciative of her effort to communicate this to him. He had analyzed her social cues and mannerisms, and though he knew the answer on a biological basis, he still thought it courteous to ask.

"How are you holding up?"

Raine shrugged, digging the heel of her boot into the floor. "Fine, I guess. I mean, considering everything. My head's been healing okay, and that fucker last night didn't get very far before I put him in his place, so at least there's that."

Harkness heard the rawness there and took a gamble. "Are you sure you're all right? Regardless of the outcome, that must have been a horrible experience to find yourself in."

She glanced away. "Not the first time it would have happened."

Everything inside his head, every thought, every question, skidded to a screeching halt. "What?"

A muscle worked in her jaw as a haunted quality overtook her gaze. "There was someone back in the Vault. Freddie, he—"

 _Freddie._ Harkness recognized the name, remembered the way she'd yelled it while thrashing around in the restraints of his arms.

_"Freddie, no!"_

_"Stop it! You swore you wouldn't!"_

_"Damn it, Freddie! I won't forgive this!"_

It all suddenly made sense.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything," Harkness muttered, mournful of his error in judgment.

She watched him, her face carefully neutral. "Now do you see why I didn't want you poking around for details on my background? It's not pretty. And that wasn't even the worst part of it."

_I can only imagine._

"Sorry," he said again. "I think I can understand why you don't like men."

Raine blinked at him, her brow knitting. "Wait. You think I'm…? No, you've got it wrong. Freddie was my boyfriend."

It took Harkness nearly a minute to process that, computerized functions freezing and lagging. "…Oh." _I'd always thought… because she had… with only women…_

"Anyway, it didn't end well. I'll leave it at that."

Harkness inwardly pleaded with himself to just shut up. "Yes. I won't pry on that subject. You have my word."

The barest traces of a relieved smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. She shifted as if to say something else, but several groups of people strolled by on their way to their lunch breaks. Raine pressed her lips together when they caught sight of her and the security chief together.

"I should get back to work," she mumbled, glaring at the nosy onlookers.

He threw a sharp glance in their direction as well before turning back to her. "Of course. I'll let you get to it." _I need some time to sort out and make sense of all this new information, anyway._

"But hey, Harkness?" A conflicted note entered her voice as she tried to maintain eye contact with him. "Uh… I know I haven't been the most grateful for your help, but… thanks. I mean it."

He paused, surprised at the authenticity of the statement. All the stars in the universe must have aligned because if he didn't know any better, he'd say he was making actual progress with Raine Sinclair.

Harkness cleared his throat and maintained a collected exterior even as a plethora of new variables bombarded his system. "You're welcome, Raine."

She tilted her head a bit before an impish gleam entered those blue eyes. "And by the way, Chief, you've been getting awful handsy lately. Maybe you should buy me a drink first, and we'll see if that ups your chances any."

All the activity in his head died down once again as he gaped after her form disappearing back into the lab. He barely registered the curious whispers at the other end of the corridor, not quite believing the suggestive grin she had sent his way. Before, he would have dismissed it as one of her condescending lines, especially since she still had clear difficulty standing in his presence. But this time, for some reason, that smile…

Was she flirting with him?


	13. Chapter 13

** Dirge for the Lost **

_Raine sat at the edge of the chair, face blank as she tinkered with the custom-built radio on her desk. A single lamp illuminated this corner of her room, enough for her to see her work, but not so bright that it triggered another migraine. Dull pain still throbbed from the poorly stitched incision on the back of her head, and no matter how she moved, she felt the weight of the metal chip fused to her skull._

_Her fingers worked in automatic motions, screwing the last pieces of the radio into place even though the reason for its construction escaped her at the moment. She hadn’t done any electronics job in several months, but after returning from the surgical procedure earlier, her first instinct had been to blow the dust off the project and resume work on it. The repetitive actions gave her something to focus on, kept her from noticing the effects of the artificial rewiring in her brain._

_She paused when the front door of her apartment slid open and preceded a chorus of boisterous voices. At least four, all male. They came closer until someone pushed the button for her bedroom door. She brushed her shortened hair to the side and set down her tools, standing and rotating toward the entrance._

_All four rowdy Tunnel Snake members stumbled inside, chattering amongst themselves as they invaded her space. Paul flopped onto her bed in a laughing fit, followed by Wally, who took a long swig from a flask. Butch had Freddie by the collar of his jacket, and he tossed him to the floor as soon as he spotted her at the far side of the room._

_“There she is! The most hated girl in the Vault!” Butch hollered, teetering in place as he threw his arms out to the sides in a dramatic gesture. “Also known as our buddy Freddie’s MIA lesbian girlfriend. Wow, nice haircut. Makes you actually look the part of a full-fledged dyke. So where’ve you been lately, kitty-licker? You haven’t been chasing pussy behind his back and not even having the courtesy to let him watch, have ya?”_

_Paul and Wally broke out into another round of chortling while Freddie picked himself up and hovered unsteadily next to her dresser. She refrained from answering as she studied her boyfriend. In a sudden and startling instant, her vision zoomed in by itself on his flushed cheeks and dilated pupils, taking in the symptoms of alcohol and chem use before zooming out again. The abrupt shifts in perspective left her dizzy, and she swayed back against her desk to regain her balance._

_“Hey, look at that. You been drinkin’ too?” Butch jeered, stalking toward her. “Good! Let’s let bygones be bygones, huh? Tonight’s the night we throw a ‘Fuck the Overseer’ party! Hosted by yours truly and this bitch, the number one target on his hit list.”_

_Raine barely reacted when he seized a fistful of her jumpsuit and shook her. The jostling movement sent sharp stabs through her head, but her expression remained detached even as the pain reached unbearable heights. Butch seemed to notice her apathy, for he ceased at once and scowled at her._

_“The fuck is up with you?” he demanded, smelling of whiskey as he leaned closer to her face. “You were supposed to cuss me out and throw me a jab by now. What gives?”_

_She stared back at him, feeling no oncoming emotional response. “I don’t know.”_

_“You broken or somethin’? Not even gonna chew us out for barging into your place at one in the morning? Hey, Freddie, what happened to your girl? It’s like she got smacked on the head and changed personalities—”_

_Now she did wince when he grabbed the back of her skull, his fingertips swiping over the shaved area and uneven stitches. Butch stopped, his sneer disappearing. His brow knitted as he turned her around to get a glimpse of her head from behind._

_“What the hell?”_

_Both Paul and Wally’s laughter died down when they caught sight of the jagged stitch work running from the top of her cranium to the base of her neck. She felt a trickle of blood rolling along the bottom few stitches, telling her that one of them had ripped open. Her gaze went to the baseball cap hanging on the wall, which she had planned to wear around her father until her hair grew back and hid the gash._

_“Raine!” Freddie exclaimed, coming forward to take her from Butch’s grasp. “Holy shit, babe. What happened?”_

_She merely shrugged, her usual answer to his questions in the past few months. An unexpected dark look passed over his features, which caused her to hesitate at the uncharacteristic expression. Before she could analyze it, however, Butch reached around her and gave Freddie’s shoulder a push._

_“Don’t get all lovey-dovey on me now, Gomez,” the Tunnel Snake leader drawled. “I thought that Buffout and vodka mix was supposed to make you all manlier and shit.”_

_Raine blinked._ Buffout and vodka? But his chlorpromazine meds…

_She noticed the tightness that had entered Freddie’s jaw, the veins protruding beneath his skin._

_“Yeah, well…” he muttered, although the tension in his muscles contradicted his passive reply._

_“So… what should we do now?” Paul inquired, sounding uncertain as he hopped up from her bed. “We’ve got at least two hours before the doc gets off work, but if she’s too injured to get into a party throw down…”_

_“Why don’t we fuck her instead?”_

_All eyes swung to Wally, who was already unzipping his jacket and advancing on her. Although he seemed the least under the influence of a substance, he appeared dead serious. Raine made no effort to evade him when he stopped in front of her, but deep inside the crevices of her altered mind, an echo of her suppressed voice reached out from the darkness._

_“Hey, man, cut it out. That ain’t funny,” Freddie said in a warning tone as he wedged himself between them._

_Wally snickered. “Heh, look at this. Did you actually grow a pair, Freddie-boy?” he mocked, shoving him out of the way. “Nice, but share the wealth. You’ve been keeping her to yourself for months now. It’s a crime that the hottest girl in the Vault went from being a lesbian to dating you.”_

_“You asshole, is that why you told Butch to bring the party over here?” Freddie snapped, quite unlike himself as he shoved Wally back. “So you could put the moves on my girl?”_

_Butch stepped in before Wally could retaliate, taking Freddie’s arms and holding them behind his back as he dragged him a few paces away. “Hey, hey, relax. We’re all friends here, right?”_

_“That’s my fucking girlfriend he’s about to lay his paws on! She and I haven’t even—” Freddie cut himself off at that point, seeming to realize his error when Wally’s eyes lit up._

_“Haven’t what? You two haven’t even done it yet?”_

_The strained hush that fell over the room provided the answer. Wally grinned and whirled on Raine, who stood still as he wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her against him. Over his shoulder, she saw Freddie trying to free himself from Butch’s grip, desperation and ire twisting his visage into something almost unrecognizable._

_“Virgin, huh? Technically speaking. Hell, you’ve slept with more girls than Freddie has for sure,” Wally murmured, peering down at her as he stroked her cheek. “Why don’t I show you what it’s like to be with a man?”_

_Raine turned her face away in the first sign of resistance when he leaned in to kiss her. Inside, she still felt numb, cold to the situation unfolding, but the distant thrum of her forgotten spirit grappled for acknowledgement in her hollow center. Wally moved his mouth to her ear, his tongue darting out to lick the creases, and she shuddered in revulsion out of reflex more than active dissent. As Freddie bit out a stream of expletives, Paul sidestepped toward the door, all traces of humor gone._

_“Yo, I didn’t sign up for this, guys,” he declared, looking more disturbed than anything._

_Wally backed Raine into her desk, seating her on the cluttered surface as he tugged down the zipper of her jumpsuit. “So watch or leave.”_

_Paul needed no further persuasion, turning and bolting when Wally’s hand slipped beneath her undershirt to squeeze her right breast. She kept her line of sight fixed straight ahead, catching Freddie’s enraged struggling when Wally shifted enough for her to see behind him. What drew her attention, however, was the ambivalent quality in Butch’s features._

_He observed the scene while still restraining Freddie, neither enjoyment nor consternation evident in his face. If anything, he seemed hesitant, conflicted, giving no clear clue to his personal opinion on the matter. Similar to her surprise at Freddie’s atypical behavior, she found herself having to digest this bewildering demeanor coming from Butch. She maintained her gaze on him even as Wally spread her legs and settled between them, his rough fingers attempting to strip her of the top half of her jumpsuit._

_“She’s not even resisting,” he snorted, pausing to glance at his fellow gang members. “You see this, Freddie? She obviously wants me.”_

No. I don’t.

_Her inner voice had managed to break through to the surface of her consciousness, weak and faint, but tangible enough for her to hear it._

_Freddie went very still, a shadow falling over his countenance. His glare snapped to her, both incredulous and condemning. “What’re you doing, Raine? Push him off! Fight him! Why are you just taking it?”_

_She only regarded him in silence, at a loss for the correct action to take. Trapped by her own damaged mindset, she lacked the will to save herself from this defilement. Harsh betrayal flashed across Freddie’s eyes, and she saw the denunciation there, the new fury directed solely at her. He faulted her. He blamed her._

_But she was no longer human enough to care._

_“Wally, maybe we should call it a night, huh?” Butch suggested out of the blue, releasing Freddie when the latter stood motionless in place. “This party’s lost its vibe. Let’s ditch this joint and go find more booze.”_

_Wally shot him a peculiar vexed look. “We’re not finished here._ I’m _not finished with her.”_

_Raine uttered no sound when he tore her undershirt in half, hardly blinking when he went on to slide his arms around her and fumble with the clasp of her bra. Both Butch and Freddie appeared paralyzed from their own individual dilemmas. And as she focused on the picture frame hanging at the far wall, Wally brought his lips back to her ear, whispering in tones low enough for the others to miss._

_“Nothing personal. Overseer’s orders.”_

_He yanked off her bra in one fluid motion, but then froze when her bare chest came into view. Another shift in the atmosphere pervaded the room at that moment. She already knew what he and the others were gaping at, as even in the dimness, the ultraviolet markings glowed across her sternum._

_“The hell are these?” he asked, inspecting them closer. “Blueprint drafts? Tattooed on?”_

_She shut her eyes and recalled the stabbing of the needles over her skin, along with the verbal explanation of the next phase of her clinical sessions in the coming months. Wally was correct in his deduction, for they did function as blueprints of sorts. She peered down at the pattern they made over her chest, the way they stretched up to her clavicle and wound along the space between her breasts. They could almost have been attractive in design, if not for the reality of their purpose lurking behind the effervescent colors._

_In the corner of her eye, she saw Butch stiffen, and when she glanced at him, the shock and trepidation he exhibited took her aback._

_“Wally, we’re done with this,” he asserted, firm in his order as he tore his gaze away from her. “Let’s. Go.”_

_“Fuck you,” Wally returned, still leering at her chest. “If you can’t go through with it, fine, but I’m going to have her.”_

_In a flash, something hauled him away from her and flung his thrashing body to the floor. Raine started at the abrupt action, lips parting when she spotted her boyfriend towering over him. Freddie bared his teeth in a ferocious expression as he delivered a hard kick to his fellow Tunnel Snake’s ribs._

_“Stay the fuck away from my girlfriend,” he growled, no semblance of his usual timid manner anywhere to be found. “Now get the hell outta here before I kick your sorry ass, Mack.”_

_Although Wally glowered and sprang to his feet, ready to attack, Butch came up and seized him from behind, using the momentum to throw him off balance._

_“You two punks are a fuckin’ pain to deal with,” Butch grunted, dragging a cursing Wally after him as he made his way to the exit. “Fighting over some lesbian like she’s the goddamn Holy Grail. At least know how pathetic that makes you look, for fuck’s sake.”_

_Freddie trailed them to the doorway and hit the button to shut it once they crossed into the hall. Their arguing voices continued for another thirty seconds before Butch managed to lug Wally out of the apartment, at which point peace finally descended over the area. Raine watched as Freddie braced himself against the closed door, his shoulders taut beneath the shine of his leather jacket. Minutes went by in quiet tension, and she stirred only when the vents came on and blew cool air against her bare skin._

_Freddie took a few calming breaths and then straightened, turning to her. “You were really gonna let him have his way with you.”_

_Raine shook her head, but said nothing as he advanced on her, the aggression radiating from him in waves. He grabbed her by the arms and pulled her from the desk, his harsh grip digging into her flesh as he pierced her with a wild look of anger and hurt. She remained impassive when he moved his hands to cup her face, accepting his frantic kisses and rough handling._

_“I barely see you anymore. You don’t tell me anything that’s happening. I don’t even know what the hell all this is,” he told her in a hoarse timbre, running his nails down the length of her chest over the markings. “You’ve never gone all the way with me. And you were just gonna sit there and let Wally fuck you? Do you know how much that fucking pisses me off?”_

_She drew in a sharp breath when he reached down into her underwear and groped around before shoving his fingers inside her, the action sending ripples of pain throughout her lower abdomen. She tried to back away, but he used his free hand to rip the rest of her jumpsuit at the seams. Now almost fully naked with shreds of fabric at her feet, she grimaced as he pumped his digits in and out of her, the friction only worsening the agony of his clumsy ministrations._

_“I’m not letting anyone else have you. Not Wally, not Amata, no one else. You’re mine.”_

I’m not your property, _the voice inside her head retorted, stronger now, but still imprisoned._ And you’re wrong in trying to guilt me.

_A small noise issued from her throat when he suddenly withdrew, and she placed a tentative palm over her aching groin as he shed his jacket and unzipped his jumpsuit. She caught the scent of his arousal even before he freed his erection, the sheer size of it enough to send her pulse racing. As soon as he pushed her underwear down, a remnant of her inner self compelled her to latch onto his wrist. Unlike with Wally, some buried sentiment wished to preserve Freddie’s integrity. She could live with the violation from a man she’d never cared for. But from this—despite her waning humanity—they would never recover._

_“You’re walking on thin ice.”_

_The choice of words that spilled from her mouth were reminiscent of what she would have said as her former self, but in a stroke of misfortune, they caused the opposite of the intended effect._

_Freddie’s eyes narrowed, lust and resentment eclipsing the love he’d once felt for her. “Baby… you’re the one on thin ice here.”_

_She had no time to react as he spun her around and slammed her face-first into her desk. The impact jolted her vision into a temporary white light, and she registered the sensation of several screws lodged into her cheek as he lined himself up behind her. His inexperience made itself apparent in his attempts to find her entrance, but when he located it, he grasped her hips and plunged into her with one hard thrust._

Freddie, no!

_Nothing could describe the pain of her hymen breaking in such a violent manner, the unbearable feeling of being stretched to her limits as he groaned and pulled out to drive into her again. And again. Over and over. Her nails raked into the edges of her desk, eyes watering, and soon she felt the blood dribbling down her inner thighs._

Stop it! You swore you wouldn’t!

_As he continued his carnal abuse of her body, he cried out proclamations of how much he loved her. They fell on deaf ears, for she had retreated within herself. With this deed committed, the final vestiges of her previous identity faded to nothing._

I won’t forgive this.

_Her lifeless gaze drifted to the unfinished radio, and in a belated recollection, she remembered it had been the one she’d started building earlier that year to surprise him on his birthday. It sat there next to her, rocking to the rhythm of his ruthless thrusts. As her mentality shattered, she thought she heard some evocative descant flowing from the speakers. It circled and embraced her, guiding her into its silent melody._

_A dirge for the lost._

_And with that, Raine Sinclair entered into the eternal sleep._

_“Subject number seven-five-eight-one-zero-one…”_

She opened her eyes and blinked up at the discolored metal ceiling, waiting for the aftereffects of the dream to subside. Several things hurt, some she identified right away—such as her healing lip and side wound. Others, buried deeper, proved much harder to label.

After a few minutes, she rose and pushed herself from the bed, stretching as the regular bustle of Rivet City resonated through the corridors. A disconcerting mixture of thoughts whirled through her mind, but one detail of note stuck out to her. This time, after reliving one of her worst memories, she had actually come out of it all right.

The floor felt warm under her feet as she padded over to her wardrobe. Reaching for one of the water bottles inside, she stopped when she sensed something out of place, a feeling she’d had about this particular piece of furniture for a while now. In light of her unusual calm mood, however, she dismissed it and took several long gulps of purified water, urging her thoughts toward her agenda for the day.

Whether by strength of will or as a sign that she had begun to move on, she found it easier to avoid dwelling on certain aspects of the past.

After all, she had awoken, and that was a miracle in and of itself.

x-x-x-x-x

The instant Raine stepped out of her room, she almost walked right into someone passing by.

"Whoa, my fault," she said, recognizing Ted Strayer's unkempt attire as he dragged half a Robobrain after him.

He paused to shoot her a lopsided grin. "Hey, you're Raine," he remarked in a splendid demonstration of short-term memory, considering he had just seen her the other day. “They recruited me as another lifter for your science team. Check it out.”

“Uh, cool,” she replied when he jiggled the defunct robot parts in his grip. “Just drop it off at the lab, and Pinkerton and I will see what we can do with it.”

“Sure thing, boss,” Ted intoned amicably, going on his way.

She watched him head down the corridor, noting his more sober demeanor. Approving of the change, she adjusted her mechanic jumpsuit and strode toward the hotel lobby, intending to pick up a bottle of Nuka-Cola on her way to work. The typical sounds of muffled coughing emanated from the direction of the clinic, and as she made a mental note to ask Pinkerton about his progress on tracing the source of the sickness, she came to a halt as soon as she rounded the corner.

Someone who looked very much like Harkness stood behind the front desk of the lobby. No one else occupied the area, and she couldn’t help gawking at him as he shuffled through a stack of papers. The uncanny resemblance struck her hard, and the only reason it couldn’t have been the android was that this man wore a casual blue button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows instead of the iconic black armor of the city’s security chief.

However, when he glanced over at her, an amused expression crossed his face. “Something wrong, Raine?”

Her jaw dropped. _Oh hell, it_ is _him._

“What… what’s with that getup?” she demanded, coming closer and pointing an accusing finger at his shirt. “And why are you here looking like you had a midlife crisis career change?”

He sent her a wry grin. “Today’s one of my rare days off, but apparently that means covering for Vera while she takes Mister Buckingham in for repairs. I’m just here until she gets back.”

Raine hovered at the other side of the desk, giving him a critical once-over. “You look weird like that.”

“You sound so offended.”

“Because this does things to my perception of you.”

“What kinds of things?”

Her witty rejoinder died in her throat when he leaned forward on his elbows, his lips turning up into a devilish smile. Some vaguely familiar sensation swept into her chest, but she brushed it away at once as she stood there like a speechless idiot, heat creeping into her cheeks. He seemed different today, even beyond the attire. A certain ease had entered his posture, enough to almost convince her he had transcended his android status. She reminded herself of his true nature, but he had the build of a man, carried himself like a man, and identified as a man.

And for some reason, she suddenly found those facts bothersome.

“S-so listen,” Raine stammered, coughing a bit as she grew conscious of her grungy appearance, “I was just going to grab some Nuka-Cola from here, but since Vera’s out—”

A bottle appeared on the desk, and he scooted it toward her, a strange glint entering his eye. “Would this count as buying you a drink?”

Raine was fairly certain she resembled a deer in headlights—or however that old world saying went—as her own careless words from the previous day came back to haunt her.

“Do you always get this flustered when you stop hating people?”

“God, what’s with you today?” she snapped, swiping the Nuka-Cola and clutching it in front of her like a warding talisman. “And I never said I don’t hate you anymore, just so you know.”

Harkness actually chuckled at that. “I’m only giving you a hard time.”

“I had no idea you had a sense of humor.”

“And I’m surprised you know what humor is.”

Raine scoffed, crossing her arms. “Touché.”

“This beats constantly going for each other’s throats, though, doesn’t it?”

She studied him for a few wary seconds before forcing herself to relax in the slightest. “I guess.” Fingertips tapping on the cold soda bottle, she went on to ask, “So, substitute manager, huh? How’d you get roped into this gig?”

He sighed, exasperation taking over. “Danvers,” he lamented. “I can always count on her to volunteer me for the most troublesome tasks.”

Raine lowered her gaze to his papers, which she realized were actually security reports. “Yeah… again, thanks for taking on the task of looking after me while I was a raving lunatic. Sorry you had to do it, though.”

Harkness’s face fell, and he bumped forward into the desk as if attempting to step toward her. “No, I didn’t mean… I want you to know it wasn’t any trouble,” he declared firmly. When she didn’t answer, he softened his tone and inquired, “How are you feeling?”

She peered up at him and made a so-so gesture with her hand. “Not bad. I’ve been falling apart at the seams, but at least now I’m all patched up. Putting me down for good isn’t that easy.”

His irises gleamed in the lighting as he watched her, the standard computations flitting across the surface. Although he remained quiet, a predictable look came over his countenance.

Raine exhaled and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “You have a question. Go on, just spit it out.”

Harkness offered her a brief grin and then stated, “That night on the flight deck, due to my presence, you said it was the first time you could control something. Naturally, I’d like an elaboration. What did you mean?”

She deliberated on her answer before placing the Nuka-Cola bottle back on the desk and holding out her hands. “This. My physical abilities. I can’t use them at will. Not typically. They activate when I have heightened emotions or when I experience some kind of trauma. Sometimes, like that night, I’ll go into this autopilot mode and do things I’m aware of, but have no control over. It’s been like this ever since I left the Vault, but it got worse after my attack.”

“Things you have no control over…” He rubbed his temple, seeming perplexed. “I’ve scanned you an infinite number of times, gone over your biology, physiology, and anatomy like clockwork. What’s the source of these abilities? I haven’t detected any cybernetics or implants. As far as anyone’s concerned, you’re a fully organic human.”

Raine reached up and felt the back of her head, where the raised scar tissue formed a long trail underneath her hair. “I told Preston to keep quiet about this, but I have a parietal chip welded to my skull. Its original purpose was to amplify my senses, but it fizzled out and turned into a nullifier for systems trying to scan me. I think it’s the reason I started hallucinating after taking that blow to my head; the chip probably got damaged.”

Harkness furrowed his brow and walked around the desk. “May I?”

His khaki slacks and sharp loafers came into view as he marched toward her, and when she caught herself staring at the way he moved in civilian clothing, she averted her gaze. He came to stand behind her, his proximity still overwhelming, but no longer as unpleasant. She hesitated for a few beats, but then undid her ponytail and parted her hair to reveal the scar. The moment his fingers touched her scalp, it took everything she had to keep from jumping.

“Jesus,” he murmured, following the jagged scar all the way down to her neck. “Just what all have you been through?”

Her lashes lowered as the most honest response came forth. “A lot.”

His touch lingered on her skin, the warmth of it seeping into her body. When he next spoke, his voice had taken on a hushed quality. “But my presence makes a difference for you.”

The words hovered between a statement and a question, suspended across the stillness of the lobby.

Raine stepped away to break their contact. “Yeah. I’m still trying to figure out why.”

Harkness observed her as she faced him, appearing intrigued. “I’ve never heard of a nullifier working that well before. So you _do_ have cybernetic enhancements?”

She brought a hand to her sternum, where the numerous layers of crisscrossing gash scars covered the area the blueprint markings once occupied. “You have no idea.”

The somber declaration hung between them, but before the conversation went any further, Vera rushed inside, looking distraught.

Harkness switched his attention to her. “What’s wrong?”

“Bryan is missing,” the hotel manager announced in a trembling voice. “I think Sister managed to kidnap and run off with him.”


	14. Chapter 14

** Burn in the Moonlight **

A grave atmosphere descended over the security force's common area as six individuals crowded around the meeting table. With all available city officials and involved citizens present, the space grew heated, stifling, from the collective distress and anxiety. Raine braced herself on the back of one chair, her fingernails digging into the tattered vinyl. Tempers flared and questions volleyed between the others, but the only thing that occupied her mind was the image of Bryan somewhere out there, lost and frightened. Her gut twisted at the thought. She couldn't pinpoint exactly when she had relearned the concept of caring. But when she cared, she did so with every fiber of her being.

And if someone dared to hurt him, there would be hell to pay.

She locked her sharp gaze onto Flak and Pinkerton, who had launched into a verbal back and forth across the table.

"I don't know how, but it had to be that sleaze Sister," Flak stated, pinning the old scientist with a hard look. "Bryan hasn't set one foot outta the city since he got here. He ain't the type to just up and run away."

"But did you actually see Sister take him?" Vera chimed in from beside Raine, wringing her hands together. "When you came and told me Bryan had been kidnapped, I had assumed you'd witnessed it."

"Yeah. How the hell could a deadbeat punk like Sister get back on this security-infested boat and swipe a kid?" Pinkerton demanded.

Flak shrugged, shaking his head. "Look, I'm just sayin'. You break it all down, these are the facts: Bryan's missing, and he wouldn't leave on his own. I'd bet my left nut he was dragged off. And the main suspect is a no-brainer," he said as he shifted his line of sight to Raine. "Who else would have a motive to kidnap a kid?"

She stared back at him, mentally going over every interaction she'd had with Sister. Motives aside, only he would have the capacity to harm a child. Some details remained foggy, but things began to click into place.

Pinkerton let out an impatient sigh. "All right, let's say you're not just pulling all this out of your ass, and Sister did run off with the boy as his way of giving Rivet City the finger," he grumped. "Why Bryan? His issue was with Raine. Sure, she probably would've flattened him into a pancake if he tried anything on her again, but—"

"Wait," she interjected, fingers leaving the chair to rake over her temples. "No, it makes sense. This was months ago, but Sister said he wanted to get back into slaving, and he tried to get me to join him. That was when I broke his nose."

They all peered at her, falling silent. She worked through the sequence of events, trying to place herself in his perspective and piece together the logic in his actions. Taking Bryan could have been a direct act of retribution against her, as the boy had been the most vulnerable member of her small social circle. The "how" concerned her little; she sought to know the "where," and she already had a fairly good guess.

Vera reached out and gripped her forearm, eyes wide. "Then… if that's true, he's headed for—"

"Paradise Falls," Raine declared. Her lip then curled into a spiteful sneer. "Boy, is he in for a surprise when he gets there."

Flak eyed her quizzically. "What do you mean?"

She replaced her hands on the chair and replied, "There's nothing left of Eulogy Jones and his business. A tidbit Three Dog never bothered to broadcast."

Pinkerton squinted at her and leaned forward over the table. "You're telling us you wiped out the heart of the Capital's slaving community all by yourself?"

"I had help. But yeah, the place has been almost completely cleared out."

The others exchanged stunned looks before all eyes drifted to the head of the table, where Harkness presided with his arms folded over his chest, Danvers at his side. Although he still wore his civilian attire, his entire demeanor had transformed back into that of the stern security chief. The muscles in his forearms grew taut as scrutiny entered his gaze. He glanced at each of them in turn, the hard set of his jaw indicating his skepticism.

"How sure are we that this is indeed a kidnapping, and that the culprit is hightailing it toward Paradise Falls?" he demanded.

Raine shifted, hard-pressed to come up with any alternative possibilities. "Pretty sure. I mean, it's the best lead we've got. You said Mister Buckingham needed repairs?" she asked Vera.

"Yes. His appendages and optical sensors were all dented and wrecked. It was heavy damage."

"Well, there you go. Put him out of commission to distract you, snatch Bryan before Harkness gets called in, and run for the hills. Sounds like a plan out of a kidnapper's wet dream," Raine remarked before drawing her eyebrows together in consternation. "The only thing I can't totally buy about it is the thought of a ham-fisted lug like Sister being able to pull it off."

Flak nodded, but pointed to the clock above the door to the exit. "Yeah, this ain't exactly something you have time to verify, though. If they're headed to Paradise Falls, they gotta go through the downtown area. Super mutants and the Enclave are still scattered around the place, right?"

Raine's grip on the chair tightened as she recalled her outright refusal to assist the Brotherhood in exterminating the Enclave remnants all those months ago. "Shit. That's true…"

"Now, hold on," Pinkerton interjected. "There weren't any witnesses for this incident, either, were there? Any of you knuckleheads even consider the possibility that the person who might've done this could be the very same offender we've already been looking for? The one who bashed Raine's cranium in?"

Another pause filled the room as the idea sank in.

"I say we send someone after 'em," he continued. "Or, at least, send someone in that general direction to see if there's a trail."

Danvers frowned and placed a hand on her hip. "But who? Everyone in the city is either sick, unfit for the task, or shackled to specific responsibilities. And as Harkness said, we're working with speculation here, not facts."

Raine stared hard at the grimy surface of the table, waiting for someone else to throw out any other suggestions. Her stomach wound itself into knots as she laid out the options in her head and weighed them. A time limit ticked in the background while she deliberated, her eyes flicking up to scan the metal walls. They seemed to press in on her, reminding her of her purpose here, the reason she had come to the city in the first place. Many other unresolved aspects pulled her mind in different directions, and she cringed at the mayhem they stirred inside. She wasn't ready to venture out. She wasn't the answer. She wasn't a hero. But even as these things darted across her thoughts, she narrowed it down to two choices. And for the first time in a very long time, she cast self-preservation to the wind.

"I'll go."

"No," barked Harkness, Pinkerton, and Vera in unison.

On the surface, she agreed with them. But deeper down, an inclination much bigger than herself had taken over. "It has to be me."

"Absolutely not. You haven't fully recovered from all the recent beatings your body has taken," Vera told her in a sharp tone.

"And you think I'm going to let my one lab assistant waltz off to her death?" Pinkerton added, his concerns centered on their work, as expected. "Think again. It'll take me forever to find a replacement I can tolerate. You sit your ass down and stay put, missy."

Raine sent a sidelong glance at Harkness, who looked like he also wanted to say his piece. Instead, he held his tongue and peered back at her, the unspoken words written in his eyes. She tried to decipher them, but Danvers, who appeared torn in her stance, tapped his shoulder.

"We could hire someone on the outside. Send word with one of the caravan merchants to Reilly's Rangers or the Regu—" she paused to shoot Raine an exasperated look. "Oh, wait. You annihilated the Regulators, didn't you?"

Raine tensed, but refrained from disputing the inaccuracy of that notion. "Just another reason why I should be the one to go. Don't bother spending the extra time to reach the merc groups. I can leave now and catch up to them if they really are following the route to Paradise Falls."

Danvers remained unconvinced. "I don't know, Raine. Your healing time seems to take a lot longer than it used to. I'm aware you've gone on dangerous missions for Rivet City before, but it just seems… different now for some reason. I wouldn't feel right sending you out."

A slight twinge at the back of her skull tipped Raine off to the reason for her body's hindered recovery speed.

Flak sidled to the center of the room and gestured to her. "If you think about it, Raine's probably your best bet for the job. Who knows what Sister will do to Bryan when they get to Paradise Falls and find out there ain't nothin' left?" he pointed out. "This is a kid's life we're talkin' about here. Hell, I'd go myself if I didn't have to run the ordnance shop solo with Shrapnel sick."

"But she's already got a damn job here, and that's to necro a bunch of robots to babysit the water transports," Pinkerton argued. "I thought you all wanted that project done ASAP. I'm for Lana's idea."

"Don't give me something else to worry about, Raine," Vera pleaded, fingers held to her temple as if suppressing a migraine. "I'm asking you not to risk yourself."

Raine glowered at the naysayers, incredulous at their lack of faith. "You all do know who you're talking to, right? I've fought super mutants and Enclave soldiers before, at the same time, while a yao guai bit my ass. Even had three of my limbs crippled, but I pulled through. Just because I've been slumming in the city doesn't mean I've retired from combat."

Further arguments flew at her at once, undermining the rare selflessness she had tried to exhibit. Even so, she held fast to it. This went beyond the concept of valor, which they all mistakenly believed to be the root of her decision. Putting someone before herself felt foreign and harrowing, but every instinct pushed her to it in this critical case. A number of elements had begun to morph inside, and she owed no one a reason for the evolving matters of her inscrutable mind.

The volume nearly escalated to an unmanageable level, but all voices ceased at once when the security chief slammed his palm into the table, cracking it all the way down to the other end.

Harkness fixed his attention on Raine, a shadow in his gaze. "Are you sure," he intoned, speaking with deliberate enunciation, "you want to be out there by yourself right now?"

She returned his heavy stare, reading the concern hidden in its weight. Right away, she understood the message, recognized a crucial aspect she had overlooked. However, it did little to hinder her, as she redrafted the plan and came up with a potential solution.

"I need a word with you, Chief," Raine announced suddenly, brushing past Vera to move toward the exit. "Just for a few minutes. It's important."

He seemed perplexed at the request, but hesitated for only a few seconds before excusing himself and telling the rest of them to sit tight. They looked on in silence as Harkness followed Raine out of the common area and up the stairs to the upper levels of the bridge tower. She led the way to his office, trying to phrase the next step in her head. Even just thinking about it brought a stiffness to her gait. It would be a longshot, but at this point, she had little choice.

Once they entered the office and shut the door behind them, Harkness rotated toward her and waited in expectation.

Raine blew out a long breath. "Just so we're clear, I'm a hundred percent willing to go," she began, tucking loose tendrils of hair behind her ear. "But I've gotta ask a big favor."

His brow furrowed as he studied her. "Whatever it is, I'm of the opinion that you're in no state to be wandering outside on your own. If that chip in your head really is damaged, and you happen to fall into one of your trances in the middle of a fight, you're going to be extremely vulnerable, super strength or not."

She glanced away and scuffed her boot over the floor. "So come with me."

_There. I said it._

A hush fell over the space and stretched for several beats.

Harkness tilted an ear toward her, as if doubting his own hearing. "Pardon?"

She hooked her thumbs through her belt loops, still facing to the side. "Put Danvers in charge temporarily. She's capable of running the city for a few days," she said, trying to still her fidgeting. "And Pinkerton will live even if I'm gone for a while, especially if I track down some old acquaintances and send them here after dealing with whoever took Bryan. Danvers mentioned recruitment would be important down the road. I can double this trip for that purpose."

"Yes, but—"

"I know it sounds unreasonable with everything going on, but…" She trailed off and forced herself to meet his eyes. "You're the only one who can snap me out of the autopilot mode—the Subject 758101 mentality—when it activates. Don't know why, don't know how. There are other people I would've preferred to have this effect. But for some reason, it's you."

Raine sensed it then, an implicit connection that pulsed to life between them. Almost tangible, concrete, startling in its existence. And judging by his expression, Harkness seemed to have picked up on it as well.

Attempting to disregard it, she rushed on, "Anyway, whether you and the others like it or not, I'm heading out to find Bryan, bottom line. I'd just have better chances if you came, too."

The conflict spread over his countenance, fast and austere. He ran his fingers through his neatly combed hair before pacing across the length of the office. She watched him work through the equations, the familiar balancing of options, the pros and cons; so similar to her own problem-solving process, only in a computerized manner. The soles of his loafers issued light squeaks over the metal floor, and he adjusted the collar of his shirt even though the top three buttons were already undone. Artificial perspiration glimmered on his forehead, so perfectly simulated that she could almost feel his dilemma firsthand.

She knew how absurd the request sounded, asking the chief of security to abandon his position and accompany her on a retrieval job that may or may not be a complete waste of time. If they'd gotten it wrong, and the crime, culprit, and destination all turned out to be incorrect, the endeavor would come at a cost to the city.

Chance was all they had to go on, but it either came down to this or the chance of acting too late.

"I can't," Harkness finally declared, stopping in front of her and shaking his head. "It's just too much I'd be hoisting on Lana's shoulders. The water caravans, the ongoing investigations for the sickness _and_ your assault, the science team progress, the daily security reports—no, it's just not possible. Even when she and I are both here, we're barely enough to keep everything afloat."

Raine's heart sank in dismay, but she had expected as much. "Yeah, I get it. Just thought I'd try," she remarked, nodding. Then, giving him a half-shrug, she stepped toward the door. "All right. I'll be back in a few days, give or take."

"Hold it," Harkness barked, seizing her elbow. "You're really intending on going out there alone? Even though you know your condition could render you defenseless? You don't even have your weapons or armor with you!"

"Then open the armory for me so I can grab my gear. Look, I said I was going no matter what. Not trying to guilt-trip you or anything. I just can't sit around waiting for you and Danvers to figure out a solution when Bryan could be in trouble."

Harkness went quiet again, his scowl searing into her. He tightened his grip on her elbow, as if trying to decide whether to let her go or force her to stay. She didn't recoil from his nearness this time, now too focused on the dire situation to acknowledge her own discomfort.

"You told me once before that you don't want to be out in the Wasteland right now," he murmured, leaning in close enough for her to see the realistic stubble dusting his chin. "Sounded serious, but you're ready to brave it again?"

She held her own against his overpowering proximity. "For Bryan? Yeah. I am. Coming from me, try to understand what that means."

Unexpectedly, his expression softened. He released her and sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "Danvers is going to kill me…"

Hope flickered across her chest. "So… is that an affirmative?"

Harkness frowned down at her, but it lacked his customary disapproval. "Thinking about it again, it would be irresponsible of me to let you flounce out of here by yourself when I can draft ten different ways you'd get killed due to your condition."

"I should be fine out there as long as you're with me."

He reached out with his fingers as if to touch her face, but seemed to catch himself at the last second by diverting the movement to her shoulder. "All right."

x-x-x-x-x

"You two can't be serious," Danvers snapped from the entrance of the armory, watching them as Private Jones hovered next to her. "Are you at least going to tell the security force that their chief has decided to take an extended vacation to play hero out in the Wastes?"

Despite herself, Raine snorted. "You could always tell them you're obligated to play warden to the hated outlaw you're setting loose back out on the Capital. I'll even wear an orange jumpsuit to look the part. You can put me in handcuffs, too, if you want while we're marching out of here."

Harkness gave her an unamused look and plucked her recon helmet from its place on a high shelf. "You're saying stuff like this on purpose, aren't you?" he muttered just loud enough for her to hear.

"Stuff like what?" Raine asked, grimacing when the clasps of her reacquired recon armor took more effort to fasten than she remembered. "I think I've gained weight…"

"Never mind," Harkness told her before peering over her head to address Danvers. "Call a quick meeting for all officers not currently on duty. I'll announce what's going on, and I'll have them relay the message to everyone else. Trust me, this wasn't my first choice, either, but…"

"Yeah, I know," Danvers replied, dragging a weary hand down her face. "Raine, your stubbornness and Harkness's ridiculous sense of responsibility are going to be the end of Rivet City as we know it."

"Wow, and here I wasn't even trying to bring this settlement to ruin," she quipped. "That's gotta be a new record for me."

Danvers only shook her head and pivoted on her heel to leave, off to begin her new term as the interim security chief. Harkness, back in his standard Rivet City armor, stepped a few paces away and readjusted his uniform vest while Raine sorted through her old backpack full of handguns. She pursed her lips while she rifled, thinking of the hurdles ahead.

Danvers numbered one of several unhappy citizens who had already learned of the upcoming land trip, and the reactions ranged from utter confusion to outspoken displeasure. Many residents still saw Raine as a criminal, and they failed to fathom why Harkness intended to go out of his way to accompany her on her rescue efforts. While she couldn't care less what they thought of her, she did wonder how his developing association with her would affect his standing as an authority figure.

The armory grew quiet, save for the sounds of clinking weapons. After a while, she noticed the intensity with which Harkness stared at her, searching, piercing, into and through her. Some of her self-consciousness came rushing back, and only then did it occurred to her that she would be subjected to his presence, nonstop, during their travels.

_Crap. Well, too late to change my mind now. Think of this as a necessary evil._

She used her peripheral vision to watch Harkness as he spotted something on one of the other shelves above her and ventured toward it.

“Here, I think this is another of yours,” he said, grabbing a second backpack and holding it out to her.

A black leather sleeve hung out from the open flap, and it caught onto Harkness’s watch strap as Raine tried to take it. She froze when the Tunnel Snake jacket slid out and hit the floor, the green snake emblem flashing in the light.

Harkness bent down to pick it up. “Sorry. Dropped your—”

She snatched it out of his hands before he could finish his sentence, stuffing the jacket into her first backpack and slinging it over her shoulders. “All right, I’m done,” she stated, itching to leave the confined room.

He regarded her in bewilderment for a second, but didn’t question her. “Got everything you need?”

"Yeah, let's go."

Harkness handed her the helmet of her recon armor set and followed her out into the corridor. Private Jones floated over in an automatic bid for an inspection, which she performed while Harkness locked up the armory. Once she cleared the Mister Gutsy to carry on, the security chief ordered him back to his post and then led the way to the stairs. Raine trailed behind him as they made their descent through the bridge tower, noting the vacant space on his back.

"You're not carrying your plasma rifle."

He glanced at her as they rounded the corner and started down the last set of steps. "I haven't needed it today."

Raine quirked an eyebrow. "Usually you're armed to the teeth when you're around me."

"That hasn't been true for a while."

She opted against responding to that and busied herself with inspecting her helmet while they walked together toward the stairwell. A few inquisitive security officers approached them from across the quarters and distracted Harkness long enough for her to attempt to slip away. He still had the security meeting to attend, and she took that as her cue to wait for him outside by the bridge to the city.

The moment she reached the entrance to the stairwell, however, a familiar lanky form appeared and blocked her path.

"Raine," Seagrave said in an odd pitch as he halted in the doorway.

"Yeah, hi. Long time no see. Bye," she replied impatiently, trying to move around him.

"Actually, I was hoping to run into you," he declared.

She gave up all notions of escape when Harkness came to stand next to her.

"What do you need, Seagrave? We're on a schedule here. "

The merchant peered between them and then settled his gaze on Raine, seemingly undecided about how to address her. "I, ah, got my repaired radio from Bryan some time ago. He said you fixed it and wanted to return it yourself."

She shifted her weight and tapped her foot. "Yeah. What about it?"

"Well, I can't say I was expecting that. Especially after you got attacked. And now I hear Bryan's missing and you're chasing down his possible kidnapper."

"That's the plan. So how about stepping aside and letting me carry it out?"

Seagrave's expression grew anxious. "Listen, before you head out, I just thought I should come forward with some info you might be interested in."

Both Raine and Harkness went still as he shuffled from one foot to the other.

"I don't know if this would fit into anything that's going on, but a couple months back, a man wearing black armor and a black helmet came up to me and asked if I wanted to get into some work with his boss, using my old connections to Paradise Falls," Seagrave confessed. "I've come clean to you about my shady past, Chief, and there was no way I was going to walk into that kind of trouble. I told him to hit up the others with backgrounds in the slave trade because I wasn't interested. He just turned around and left. Travelers are in and out of here all the time, and I never saw that person again." He paused and scratched at his chin. "But now, learning about Sister getting kicked out, and Bryan disappearing, and the fact that Raine's attacker still hasn't been identified… I have no idea if any of them are connected, but that encounter comes to mind."

Raine exchanged a glance with Harkness, and he stepped forward to tower over the shorter man.

"Can you describe his appearance in more detail? I'll have Danvers keep an eye out for someone fitting that profile."

"I never saw his face, but he was about your height and just a bit burlier," Seagrave told him. "His armor wasn't like any I'd seen in the Capital before. Some variant of combat armor, but pure black, not like Talon Company's, and made of materials that seemed to blend into the surroundings. I guess even if he did pass through the city again, it'd be hard to spot him."

Harkness swung his eyes to Raine, but she only shook her head.

"I don't think I saw my assailant's physique or attire. All I can remember are certain features of his face," she stated. "If we could stick his head on the body of Seagrave's mystery man and just pin everything on him, that'd be great."

Harkness frowned and turned back to Seagrave, exhaling. "Well, thanks for coming forward with this. I'm not sure how much Danvers will be able to look into it while I'm gone, but it's good to have the tip all the same."

"Glad to help. I hope this paves the way for a truce, Raine," Seagrave remarked as he held out a hand to her. "You seem like you've changed in the past few months."

The amicable gesture took her aback, but she gave him a cordial nod and accepted his handshake. "I guess. I'm not claiming to be anything different than I ever was, though."

"You're off to save a boy—for the second time. That's something honorable I wouldn't have thought you capable of."

Her lips turned up into a smirk. "Or maybe you people are starting to open your eyes to actually look at me."

x-x-x-x-x

Flak walked where the moonlight didn't hit, keeping to the shadows as he made his way to the neglected side deck of the ship. The water below lapped at the creaking structure, and he used the noise to mask his footsteps on his trek. Ducking under a broken staircase, he emerged onto the clearest portion of the deck and saw the two black-clad figures standing at the meeting spot.

"It's done," Flak said in a low, rough tone. "Now hand over the antidote."

One of the figures, a man wearing black armor and a matching helmet, raised his arm to keep his similarly dressed female companion back. "It wasn't done as we agreed," he hissed, voice distorted through some sort of breathing apparatus beneath the helmet. "The plan was to send Raine Sinclair on the hunt while the security chief stayed back, but it seems he has left the city with her."

"I couldn't do anything about that. They decided it on their own before I figured out what was happening," Flak retorted. "But I got her to go after Sister, didn't I? I even broke Vera's Mister Handy and knocked Bryan out for him. My conscience is fucking eating me up. You people owe me big time."

The man strode toward him, everything in his demeanor ominous and menacing. "It was all for nothing because the point was to separate Sinclair and Harkness."

Flak gritted his teeth and reached for the 10mm pistol on his belt. "That ain't my problem. I've done your dirty work. Give me the goddamn antidote."

"Dirty work? Do you know the meaning? Sister drew all suspicion toward himself and escaped with the boy to lure out Sinclair. He did his part. You were tasked to kill Seagrave Holmes. It took you months to decide you couldn't do it. So then we assigned you this simpler task. And still you messed up."

"Then give me another job. But I ain't killin' anyone," Flak rumbled. "Not even for Shrapnel."

"Hm. Yet you'd orchestrate a kidnapping for him."

"Yeah, well, I gave Bryan a way to leave a trail of breadcrumbs. If he plays it smart and makes sure Sister doesn't notice, Raine'll be able to catch up to them before they make it to Paradise Falls. Not that there's anything left there, it turns out." Flak's countenance tightened, indicating some inner moral turmoil. "Good thing, I'd say. Whatever plan you and Sister were brewing up, all I care about is the kid makin' it through."

"Your incompetence and remaining ethical compulsions are a detriment to this arrangement," the man intoned with flat emotion. "The only logical course of action now would be to cut you loose."

Flak tensed, curling his lip. "I ain't leaving until I get the antidote. Shrapnel doesn't have a lot of time left—"

"Antidote?" the woman chimed in, her voice also distorted through her helmet as she giggled. "Well, since we don't need you anymore, you should know: there is no antidote."

"The fuck are you talkin' about?" Flak demanded. "I took the damn thing when you gave it to me after I got the sickness. You promised me a dose for Shrapnel when I agreed to work with—"

"You never had the sickness," the man informed him. "We poisoned your meals with radscorpion venom to simulate the same symptoms. The 'antidote' we gave you was just the anti-venom."

Flak froze in place.

"There's no cure for the sickness," the woman tittered. "Your friend Shrapnel is going to die just like everyone else who has it."

The visible rage traveled in currents over Flak's body as comprehension and despair registered in his eyes. In deft movements, he drew his pistol and strafed to the side, aiming for the weak point in the neck of the woman's armor. Before he could pull the trigger, however, the man zipped forward in the blink of an eye and buried the entire blade of a combat knife into Flak's throat.

Shock, disappointment, fear. All flitted past in quick succession as he choked and gurgled, the pistol dropping from his grip. Blood seeped from the fatal wound to pour over the hands that killed him. And as the life left his face, his murderer dragged him to the edge of the carrier and tossed him over, knife and all.

The woman sauntered over after the body hit the water with a splash. "You're gonna make me go down there to chop up the corpse and bury it, aren't ya?"

“It’s a necessary task,” the man replied. “We’ve been sloppy with erasing our steps, especially with Seagrave still alive and your key going missing.”

“Yeah, Sister said he couldn’t find it in Zimmer’s room. But I can just pick the lock to my footlocker, so I’m not too worried about it.”

A long sigh issued through his helmet. “You should be. This entire operation has already fallen apart.”

"So what'll we do now? I haven't been able to get in contact with the boss. With Pinkerton and those other science assholes in the lab, I can't get to the terminal."

"What about the radio he had used to contact you in the first place?"

She shrugged. "Seagrave's had it since the boss switched me to the terminal. But last I heard, it was broken. And I don't even know which frequency to reach the boss on."

"Do you not pay attention? It's been fixed," the man declared. "That will be the next step, then. I will kill Seagrave myself. Approaching him in the first place was a mistake on my part."

"Not like he knows who you are, though."

"Regardless. While I'm dealing with that, you snatch the radio at the first opportunity. This should be simple with Harkness absent from the city."

"Okay. Just watch your ass when you go back inside the boat. Security's still looking for the person who attacked _her_."

"I know," he answered, reaching up to remove his helmet. The flash of orange retinas came into view, burning in the moonlight as he exposed his face to the dark waters below. "They won't find me."


	15. Chapter 15

** Those Built to Survive **

The uneven terrain of the Wasteland required more attentive steps to maneuver, but it also provided a welcome change from the rocking surfaces of Rivet City. The late hour bathed the traveling pair in darkness and shadow, with the moon serving as their only guiding light. They kept to the waterside on the left, following the river on their route north. Although many months had passed since she’d traversed the Capital, Raine’s preference for the open air had never changed.

Her lightweight boots fell soundlessly on the dusty ground, and she frowned over at Harkness’s gait, which clomped along loud enough to alert even the deafest of raiders in the surrounding area. Luck had accompanied them thus far and spared them from any hostile encounters, but she gave it less than a half hour before that good fortune ran out and he drew something into attacking them. She hooked a finger into the side of her recon helmet next to her cheek, lifting it away for a few moments so she could listen to the full volume of his treading.

“Look, I’m the one who asked you to come, so I didn’t want to say anything,” she started. “But since we’re about to hit the downtown area, is there any way you can adjust your tree trunk legs to be quieter? I mean, I know you like to stomp around on the carrier as the hotshot security chief and all…”

Harkness peered at her through the face shield of his security helmet and lightened his footfalls at once. “Better?”

“Much.” She shifted her backpack and regarded him from the corner of her eye. “Been a while since you’ve walked around out here, huh?”

“Years, I think.”

“Well, welcome back to the rads and dust.”

He didn’t answer, instead looking out across the nighttime expanse of the Capital. They lapsed back into silence, having grown accustomed to it as they retreated once again to their own thoughts. An hour had passed since they departed Rivet City amidst several vocal protestors. In that time, little was said between them. She suspected they both preferred it that way. Tensions ran high, and while he likely spent each minute worrying about the state of the city, she maintained her focus on both Bryan and the companions she had promised to recruit.

Raine’s eyes strayed to the northeast, where the Museum of History sat in the middle of the fortified Mall. _On the way back,_ she told herself, imagining the hassle of dealing with the metro system again to reach it. _No time for it now._

A persistent sense of trepidation coursed through her as she considered the steady pace of their trek. Although efficient in its speed—preventing fatigue from wearing them down too quickly—she had to stifle the wish to move faster. Déjà vu had struck when they’d passed Anacostia Crossing station, the location of the last pair of children who had disappeared from Rivet City. She claimed responsibility for both instances, but in this case, her personal investment ran on a much deeper level.

Harkness scanned the horizon from beside her, slowing momentarily as he used whatever optical function allowed him to detect potential threats. She watched him as he did, noting the concentration on his face and then his slight nod when he determined no immediate danger loomed ahead. Although she could have done the same thing with her Pip-Boy, having him as an ally helped to stave off the worst of her anxieties during this mission.

Raine studied his strides, his locomotion, the altered weight of his steps to estimate the distribution of his body mass. As with all other companions she had journeyed with, she tried to formulate a tactical style that would complement his combative skills. She assumed from his armor and choice of weaponry that he favored a straightforward approach during hostile engagement, but as observant as she tried to be, she had no way of guessing an android’s full capabilities.

The soft laps of the water against the bank next to them filled the hush, and she shifted her gaze to the dark river, its rolling surface illuminated by the moon’s distant beams. She felt an odd kinship with the changing waves, imagining her mind worked much the same way. Never still, always moving, the interior and exterior set in a permanent contrast. An unfavorable nature, but one she couldn’t cast aside. It comprised her, embedded in everything that defined her. Shaped, molded, changed in the underground.

She had been born one person, and then built into another.

Abruptly, she stopped in her tracks when she spotted a small object in the sand that had caught the light.

Harkness halted as well and turned to her. “What is it?”

Rather than responding, Raine stalked forward, her abdomen clenching anew as she made a beeline for the tiny flash of silver. Upon reaching it, she leaned down and snatched it from the ground. Damp dirt covered half of it, and she wiped it on her armor as she switched on her Pip-Boy flashlight.

Harkness approached from behind her and peeked at it over her shoulder. “A bolt?”

“Not just any. It’s one specifically from the Vault,” she told him, shining the flashlight onto the untarnished metal hardware in her palm. “Only Bryan would have one of these out here. He had to have gone this way.”

“If that’s true, at least we have confirmation that we’re on the right track,” Harkness remarked, looking out toward the dilapidated landmarks up ahead. “If we continue skirting around the Lincoln Memorial on the left here, we should be able to make it past the metro area without too much trouble.”

“All right. That’s probably the route they took, too.” Raine stuffed the bolt into her pocket and resumed walking. “Come on, we could be halfway there before dawn.”

“You don’t need to rest?”

“I’ll rest when I see his face again.”

They covered ground faster now, encouraged by the first sign of Bryan’s trail. After a while, they found another bolt, and then a nut. And when Raine found the spare key to her room lying underneath some foliage outside the Georgetown neighborhood, she rushed on, almost a hundred percent certain they could catch up if they hurried.

Harkness, however, provided the voice of reason, much to her annoyance. “Slow down. You’re going to wear yourself out within the hour. Especially since you won’t let me carry your pack.”

“I’ll be fine. We need to close the distance as much as possible.”

“I’m aware of that, but adrenaline can only carry you so far,” he warned her. “Don’t lose your head, Raine. We can probably reach them before they hit Paradise Falls, but not if you end up having to take an extended nap.”

She scoffed, refusing to heed his advice. “What does a synthetic man know about human energy levels—”

An energy weapon fired from the right, startling them both as a beam projectile whizzed past Raine’s head. She cursed and sprinted for the nearest cover, a crumbling column next to one of the buildings. Depositing her pack on the ground, she slipped a Stealth Boy onto her right wrist just as Harkness rolled in behind her, his plasma rifle already drawn. They waited out a barrage of rapid fire that chipped away at the column, and she chanced a look around it when she heard the enemy reloading.

“Enclave,” she hissed, counting two figures advancing on them from the road. The fire from a nearby garbage bin cast an orange glow over their attire, allowing her to identify them. “Officer and Hellfire trooper, one o’clock.”

She found herself flattened against the column under Harkness’s body when he threw himself over her to shield her from the sudden lick of flames surging from the other side. The taste of grime flew into her mouth, and she sputtered while he held her against the hard surface, hearing the enemy issue orders to each other. When he released her, he prepared to step out.

“Cover me while I take point over at that tall block of concrete. Then I’ll try to lure the heavy fire in my direction.”

“No. You cover me while I sneak over to flank them.” She gestured to her Stealth Boy as the officer’s laser rifle spat more rounds at them. “I can have my trench knife in the trooper’s neck before he knows what’s happening.”

“ _Just do what I say_ ,” Harkness growled, reaching down to grab her assault rifle and shove it into her arms. “Don’t argue. This isn’t a stealth fight.”

Tendrils of anger curled inside her. “But—”

“Cover me. _Now_.”

Raine snarled out an expletive as she gripped the assault rifle and aimed it to temporarily draw the hostile attention on herself. With impressive speed, Harkness dashed across the area, and she alternated her rate of fire between the two enemies, gritting her teeth as she missed almost half the shots. The balance of the weapon felt off in her hands, as she had figured. She did the best she could while Harkness slid to his new position, managing to hit the Enclave officer in the shoulder just as the trooper swung his heavy incinerator toward her from ten yards away.

She ducked back behind the column as the searing flames nearly roasted her face. A series of zipping noises erupted from Harkness’s location, and she recognized the sounds of his plasma rifle, which pulled the enemy aggression back onto him. When she rotated, she glimpsed both Enclave personnel charging him at full speed. Rather than risking more missed shots, she grabbed her trench knife from her belt and activated her Stealth Boy.

The modulating field obscured her visibility at once, and she darted forward, a wisp on the breeze, heading straight for the officer as he fumbled for more microfusion cells. She came up behind him and swung the knife over his shoulder, slashing his throat in one precise movement. The serrated blade dragged through tissue and tendons, inflicting fatal damage before she shoved him out of the way. When his dead body hit the ground, the Hellfire trooper spun back, ignoring Harkness’s shots on his armor as he refocused on her.

Raine muttered an oath when her Stealth Boy’s field fizzled out, but she faced the trooper head on, watching for his angle of attack. The instant he blasted another surge of flames at her, she jumped to the side and then advanced on him, relying on her agility to avoid the incinerator’s path of fire. When she got close enough to leap for his helmet, however, it flew off by itself, and his head promptly disintegrated into a puddle of green goo.

She skidded to a halt as he went down, and Harkness stood there behind him, features livid as he lowered his plasma rifle.

“What the hell were you doing running at him like that?” he demanded, glowering at her.

Raine panted from the exertion and threw out an arm to convey her irritation while she caught her breath. “I knew what I was doing.”

“That armor isn’t enough to protect you from a cherry bomb, much less a fully weaponized furnace,” Harkness berated. “You should have stayed in your spot and attacked with a ranged weapon.”

Although her ire increased tenfold, she actually felt more comfortable now that they had begun arguing again. “All right, _Dad_ ,” she spat. “But maybe next time—”

A heavy set of footsteps interrupted her at that moment. They glanced toward the alley between two of the buildings, tensing at the sight of the Enclave deathclaw foraging around in a disoriented state. The domestication unit hung, damaged, from one side of its head, and it tried to swipe it away as the effects of the mind-controlling device seemed to wear off.

Raine’s expression went flat. “Oh, great. A deathclaw. My favorite.”

“Stay back, Raine,” Harkness ordered, stepping in front of her.

“Not happening. I’ll fight it, same as you.”

“No. If you become its target, it’s going to cut right through your attire. I’m better equipped to engage it. Stay behind me.”

“I don’t need your fucking chivalry right now, Prince Charming,” she snapped.

Her harsh tone caught the deathclaw’s attention, and once the device fell to the ground, it unleashed a furious roar. Harkness pushed her toward the concrete block, ignoring her protests. He shot at the enraged creature as it charged toward them, the focus entering his stance in the following seconds. Just as the deathclaw lashed out for his head, Harkness used his rifle to parry the razor-sharp appendages. Raine gaped as he managed to dodge each successive attack, something changing in his face as he read the strikes and blocked them at swift speeds. She realized he must have either activated both sides of himself, man and machine, or shut down the human part entirely.

However, when he put too much distance between himself and the deathclaw, it leaped at him faster than he could evade. Three claws slashed deep into his unprotected left forearm, spilling synthetic blood and cutting into some of the wires inside. Raine went into action at once, turning her Stealth Boy back on and racing over. She avoided the wild swings of the creature’s tail and dove for its hind leg to plunge her blade into the thick hide. It howled as she ripped the knife back out, and when it swiped downward, it caught her in the back before she could retreat.

Raine bit back a yelp as she rolled away and lost her Stealth Boy, the cuts stinging over her spine. The maneuver proved worth it, though, as the deathclaw’s mobility suffered from her assault. It limped after her while she scrambled to her feet, and she caught sight of Harkness working with one arm to point his rifle at its back. He shot over a dozen bolts of plasma into its body, but it withstood the barrage until the very last round lodged into its skull. Raine hopped out of the way when it face-planted at her heels, the impact shaking the Earth before silence descended.

The remaining pair stood in the aftermath, breaths heaving as they gazed down at the dead deathclaw. Raine raised her arms and placed her palms behind her head, feeling the cramping in her sides from her overworked muscles. The healing stitches below her ribs had reached an angry throb, fed by the new shallow wounds on her back. Harkness fared even worse. A clatter cut through the air as he dropped his rifle to examine the damage to his arm. Red dripped from the open gash, and a few snapped wires stuck out from the metal skeletal structure revealed beneath.

She trudged over to him, her bones heavy and aching. “Can you move it?”

He shook his head and released his grip on the injured limb, frowning when it flopped to his side. “No. These broken wires are supposed to be simulating the nerves in this arm.”

Raine reached out to take it, using her Pip-Boy flashlight to inspect it more clearly. “Shit. You’re one to talk to me about ineffective armor.”

He said nothing as she tried to pull the epidermis back together.

“How bad does it hurt?”

“I can’t feel anything there.”

She dropped her head back and let out a sigh. “No way we can keep going right now. Damn it. I’m gonna have to try to fix this tonight.”

Harkness stared at her, seeming skeptical. “Aren’t you an electrician? Not an artificial intelligence expert?”

Raine scowled, but began toting him toward her pack. “Doesn’t matter if it’s circuits, wires, or veins. If it has to do with connecting parts, I can figure it out. Besides, if I mess up, we’ll have Pinkerton redo it when we get back to Rivet City.”

“That really doesn’t reassure me.”

“You really don’t have much choice.”

Once they reached the pack, she bent down to dig out a large bandana from one of the pockets. Wrapping it over the bleeding in his arm, she said, “I know somewhere close by where we can spend the night. It might not be the ideal place, but it should be safer than hanging around out here.”

“What kind of place is it?”

She hid a grimace as she removed her recon helmet and freed her sweat-dampened hair. “Party Central of the Capital. Hope you don’t mind being around booze and sex.”

x-x-x-x-x

The blast of music hit them the instant Raine finished picking the lock and kicked open the front doors. A pungent combination of alcohol and musk assailed their nostrils as they surveyed the lively interior of the large mansion. Bodies writhed left, right, and center, either dancing in a drunken haze or engaging in sexual activity for all to see. She cringed as she led the way farther inside, her sharp eyes scanning the premises for a specific bald-headed figure. Beside her, Harkness stiffly raised the face shield of his helmet, no doubt revolted by the display of fornication and disorder.

At last, Raine spotted the womanizing man of the house, who lay on the bed in the middle of the first floor. Half a dozen women wearing lingerie surrounded him, including one of his usual favorites, Fantasia. The other, Cherry, happened to walk by at that time. She froze when she saw Raine, but her face lit up when her gaze moved to Harkness. Weaving around the sea of drunk, high, and aroused bodies, she made her way to the newcomers and smoothed out her sexy pink nightwear.

“Wow. Never thought I’d see you again, sugar. Heard that purifier business almost took you out,” Cherry told Raine, offering her a nod before sending a radiant smile to Harkness. “Who’s your handsome friend? And is that the Rivet City security armor?”

“This is Harkness, the security chief of Rivet City, yes,” Raine replied shortly. “Hey, I need to talk to Dukov. Could you go grab him for me so I don’t have to risk stepping on anyone’s genitals across the floor?”

“The security chief?” Cherry inquired, as if Raine hadn’t spoken beyond the introduction. She sidled closer to Harkness, who gawked in horror at her nipples showing through her sheer clothing. “I’m Cherry. I’ve been wanting to move to Rivet City. I hear it’s nice and safe there.”

“Yes… that’s an accurate description,” Harkness uttered in a stilted tone, addressing her chest.

Raine rolled her eyes and tried again. “Cherry. I need you to get Dukov for me.”

But the other woman ignored her and skimmed her fingers over the muscles of Harkness's good arm. “Maybe someone can sweep me away from here so I can live free in your boat, Mr. Security Chief?”

Harkness looked uncomfortable as hell when she pushed her breasts up against his armor.

In a flash, Raine seized Cherry by the arm and then backed her into the nearby wall. Pinning the older woman’s body with hers, Raine towered half a foot over her, clutching one of her wrists over her head. With her free hand, she grasped Cherry’s jaw and held it in place as she bent forward, locking their eyes.

“Bring. Me. Dukov,” Raine murmured in a dangerous timbre, her lips a hairsbreadth from the other woman’s mouth. “If you don’t, only two people will be physically able to walk away from this shithole tonight, and you can guess who. Got it?”

“Raine,” Harkness piped up from behind her.

She disregarded him and continued staring hard at Cherry, who balked at the threat in her gaze.

“Okay, okay. I get it, yeah. Just give me a sec,” Cherry stammered.

Raine released her and allowed her to scurry over to the master bed.

Harkness stepped toward her, the disapproval hardening his countenance. “We are _not_ going to attack these people unprovoked—”

“Relax. It’s a bluff,” she told him, rapping her knuckles against his shoulder. “As shitty as my reputation is, it gets me faster results. I’m not going to do anything to these people. Don’t worry.”

He paused as he studied her face, his posture losing some of its rigidity when he seemed to recognize the sincerity there. “Oh. I see.”

Dukov strode up to them at that moment, dressed in his typical satin pajama set. A nervous element tinged his smile as he halted in front of her.

“S-sweet-cheeks! What brings you back to old Dukov’s place, hah? I already gave you my key, didn’t I?” he boomed, accent as heavy as ever, his boisterous laughter sounding forced. “Have you come to finally get a taste of my sweet loving, baby?”

“That’s a mental image that makes me want to puke up my liver,” Raine remarked, curling her lip. “Listen, my companion and I just need to crash in one of your rooms—undisturbed—for the night.”

Dukov tsked and wagged a finger at her. “Now, now… I open my home to anyone who wants to fuck, but my private rooms are off limits.”

“We’re not having sex, we just need a place to get patched up,” she snapped, turning to show him her back and gesturing to Harkness’s bleeding arm, which had soaked through the bandana. “Put us in the storage room, for all I care.”

“But that’s where my stock of booze is,” Dukov retorted, crossing his arms. “And anyway, if I let you stay, I have to make sure you don’t have the sickness that’s spreading.”

Raine went still, and she swung her gaze to Harkness, who appeared equally taken aback. “What sickness?”

“I don’t know. Some weird ailment that strikes from out of nowhere. It started going around months ago. Not contagious, but I don’t want anyone sick and dying in my mansion.”

Harkness shifted, the crease between his eyebrows deepening. “Then the sickness isn’t unique to Rivet City. I’m surprised this wasn’t reported on the radio.”

Raine pressed her lips into a hard line. _Pinkerton might not be able to trace it from the city after all._

“Well, you two look like you’re in fine health. But since you won’t let me make love to you, why should I give you special treatment?” Dukov asked her.

She glowered at him, having reached the end of her patience. “Because I haven’t killed you yet. Is that good enough?”

He blanched at that and then pointed to the spare bar room up the stairs. “Fine. Up there, lock the door, but be out by morning. You sure know how to ruin the mood, sweet-cheeks. I need another drink,” he complained before turning around to return to his pit of debauchery.

Raine glanced at Harkness and tossed her head in the direction of the staircase. “Well, let’s go.”

Ten minutes later, the closed doors did well to muffle the music and wanton vocals downstairs. Raine dropped her pack onto a filthy sofa chair and kicked several empty liquor bottles out of her way as she instructed Harkness to take a seat on the couch. He did so gingerly, as if expecting to catch a disease from the stained piece of furniture. His fingers came up to remove his helmet, and she noticed his perspiration, the way it soaked his usually well-groomed hair. She turned to her pack when he sent her a curious look, busying herself with rifling through her items.

A single lamp atop the end table provided the light for the room. Raine produced a whiskey bottle she had filched on the way up and set it on the table before digging around for the medical kit Preston had given her. She felt Harkness watching her movements, his unvoiced inquiries knocking against her skull.

“We should clean and wrap those slashes on your back.”

“I’ll do that in a bit. I need to deal with your arm first."

A few beats of silence, and then—

“People still fear you out here,” he stated, although his words rang neutral enough. “Do they really have reason to?”

She hesitated for a bit, finding the answer a lot more difficult to form than she’d thought. “I’d like to say ‘not anymore,’ but I don’t know for sure.”

“The things they think you’ve done…”

“A lot of the hearsay about my exploits don’t tell the whole story, but let’s make one thing clear: I’m not a saint,” Raine declared in a tight voice as she produced the medical kit along with a small case of tools. “I did some fucked up shit out here. Make no mistake of that.”

When she faced Harkness, his searching look pierced into her.

“You? Or Subject 758101?”

The tension thickened. She swallowed, unable to come up with a response right away. He had begun piecing it all together. All the connections, the tidbits and hints he’d learned over the past several months. She could tell in his expression. And she couldn’t decide how she felt about it.

In a clumsy attempt to change the subject, she came over and plopped next to him, reaching for his damaged arm. “Let’s get this taken care of,” she muttered, setting it across her lap beside the medical kit and tools. “Exactly what happens if you lose this much blood? Does your system just get drained of fuel or something?”

Thankfully, he went along with it.

“I’m built to simulate a human, which includes automatic blood replenishment,” he replied. “My system can imitate the function of your white blood cells.”

“Damn. The Institute’s technology sounds crazy advanced,” she surmised. Then, as an afterthought that slipped through her guard, she added, “Funny, though. I was built to simulate a machine.”

Harkness blinked at her. “You were what?”

She only gave him a grim smile before dousing her hands in the high-proof whiskey off to the side. “Nothing. Just some self-pity showing through.”

“If it’s something you want to discuss—”

“No, sorry I mentioned it. But there is one thing we do need to talk about. Our tactics,” Raine said, untying the bandana from his arm and using it to dab at the remaining fluid around the wires. “That was a mess out there with that Enclave patrol.”

Harkness exhaled. “I assumed my role in this trip was protecting you while you provided the occasional assist.”

She lit a match to sterilize the tools, but her eyes snapped up to glare at him. “Are you kidding me? I’m used to being the one who calls the shots. And I figured you’d let me do my thing while you took care of the long range firing. That’s why I didn’t sit you down for this talk before we left.”

“Well, ‘your thing’ consists of rushing the enemy while wearing inadequate gear.”

“I left all my good stuff at Tenpenny Tower.” She paused as she used a scalpel and a pair of tweezers to start lining the broken wires together. “But my main combat style is stealth and melee.”

“I’d feel better if you stuck to firearms until you acquire better armor,” Harkness remarked, wincing when two of the wires she touched together resulted in a small jolt in his arm. “Though I did notice your firing accuracy could use quite a bit of work.”

Raine frowned as she set to work on rejoining the wires. “I have to relearn how to fire guns. When I started learning how to shoot, I was working with a messed up hand, so the muscle memory formed differently. After Pinkerton fixed it, I used bladed weapons exclusively and hadn’t gotten around to starting up shooting practice again.”

Harkness’s eyes roved over the repaired structure of her right hand. “Then you’re either going to have to relearn quick, find a sturdier armor set, or let me take care of the fights from here to Paradise Falls.”

“Look, pal, I may have a rookie hand, but right now, you have a fucked up arm. We fight as a team, so that last one isn’t an option.”

He peered at her as the atmosphere in the space took on a more solemn quality. “Fair enough, but I'm not letting up on the first two stipulations. I guess you could say we’re both built for stubbornness.”

Raine glanced at him and then back down at her task. “We’re built to survive, Chief. And maybe it’s not so bad surviving together.”


	16. Chapter 16

** Entangled at Their Seams **

Harkness stretched out his arm and flexed his fingers, grunting as a jolt of pain shot through the reconnected wires beneath the crudely sewn skin. He retracted it and frowned down at the railroads of stitches winding from his wrist to his elbow, all inconsistent in length and spacing. He supposed he should be thankful Raine had managed to restore his limb to a functional state, but he wondered if her novice repair job would render it weaker in the long run. The healing process had already reached the halfway point, forming what could pass off as unsightly scar tissue. While the aesthetics hardly bothered him, he felt the difference in its range of motion.

Lowering his arm, he glanced over at her unconscious form on the grimy couch. She slept facing the wall, head resting on her forearms, having passed out after attempting to pull an all-nighter. He narrowed his eyes at the inflamed wounds peeking through the torn cloth of her undershirt. Two empty stimpak syringes lay on the floor next to her recon armor top. He shook his head and leaned back in the sofa chair, anticipating her regret over half-assing her own aftercare in the morning.

The loud music still thrummed from downstairs, resonating through the walls as the late hour drew on. Harkness tried for the fifth time to power down his functions, but something akin to insomnia had set in and blocked his ability to enter standby mode. A dozen thoughts circulated through his mind, pulling his consciousness in every direction while the physical fatigue wore on his body. Readjusting to the world outside Rivet City proved to be a taxing endeavor, made more so by his high stress levels and some other unknown source of apprehension he found difficult to shake off.

He sighed irritably and leaned over to turn off the table lamp even though the luminosity made little difference to his sleepless state. Maybe if he sat in the dark and pretended to be asleep, he could trick his own system into thinking it was getting actual rest. Just as his fingertips grazed the lamp switch, however, a distressed noise issued from the couch.

Harkness paused as Raine stirred and flipped over on her other side. She still appeared to be slumbering, likely in the middle of a bad dream. Her brow wrinkled as she buried half her face into the cushion, features scrunching in pain. Harkness sat up straighter in the sofa chair, concerned at first that her nocturnal hallucinations had returned. But when her lips moved, a ringing sound of despair manifested, and the raspy words that came forth gnawed at him.

"Sorry. I'm sorry," she mumbled, voice just above a whisper. "Never meant for this. Can't make it right. Hate me, then. But I'm sorry."

He gazed at the raw contrition etched into her unguarded expression, witnessing yet another side to her he hadn't expected to see. She tossed and turned as she relived some harsh event of the past, her chest heaving as her blood pressure elevated in response. Although it required no sense of urgency, he rose to his feet and padded over to her, hovering next to the couch as he contemplated waking her to cut the nightmare short. He opted against it when he considered her earlier reluctance to sleep, but as her tossing increased, he caught the shine of tear streaks on her cheeks.

"Sorry. Hate me. Can't fix it. Blame me," she continued rambling between shuddering breaths. "My crime. My sin. Don't have to forgive me."

Harkness stood motionless as a heavy sensation formed beneath his sternum. He watched the way she seemed to struggle against her subconscious, how the hidden facets broke free and surfaced when she loosened the reins. As tough as she presented herself on a daily basis, her unchecked inner workings shined a light on the vulnerabilities beneath the stony exterior. And while he had already seen glimpses of the true persona residing behind her multiple barriers, this struck him in a different manner.

He crouched down beside her, hesitating as he studied the mounting torment in her countenance. Her eyes roved back and forth under closed lids, dry lips still moving, forehead creased. He listened to more of her agonized murmuring before abandoning reason and reaching out with his right hand. Her skin felt warm as he brushed at the dampness over her cheekbones. When the contact didn't wake her, he took the opportunity to yield to instinct, sweeping long strands of her black hair aside to trace the planes of her facial structure. She began to settle down almost at once, as if sensing the mitigating effect of his touch.

He marveled at her unconscious reaction, truly baffled by the enigmatic connection that linked them together. The futile computations in his head gave no answers as usual, but he had come to accept her nature as a slow, unraveling riddle. She surprised him in many ways, altered his initial impression of her through a constant stream of unexpected revelations. Now he regarded her with newfound esteem, having lost all contempt for her in the months leading up to this point. Whichever way her history had shaped her, she conducted herself under an ambiguous but intact moral code.

As she had told Seagrave the previous day: perhaps the beholder had but to open their eyes to see the decent person who still lived in her core.

Raine let out a soft sigh when his knuckles skated over her jawline. The tossing had ceased, and her features relaxed to a tranquil state. He refrained from questioning his own compulsion to feel her, unwilling to put an irrational notion into words. Responsibility and protectiveness came to mind; anything more than that treaded on hazardous waters. Regaining his senses, he withdrew and leaned back. However, as soon as he did, the suffering quality returned to her face.

Harkness pressed his lips together in deliberation while she curled into a ball and resumed her muttering. Then, taking a chance, he closed a light grip over her hand—the one with the faint scars from its surgical reconstruction. She quieted down again and slept soundly as he shifted into a sitting position on the floor next to her. Resting his temple against the arm of the couch, he skimmed his thumb over her palm and calluses, blinking when he felt metal rather than bone underneath. Adamantium, judging from its weight. He had detected unusual physical characteristics in her before, but only now did he manage to identify a specific one. It replaced the structure from her wrist to her fingertips, impressive in its sturdiness and function when compared to his own metal skeleton.

Not for the first time, he imagined the life she had led, the trials she had confronted up to now. The Wasteland showed no clemency to anyone who dared to walk it, but for someone as young as Raine, the misfortune and accountability foisted on her seemed disproportionate to what the rest of them faced. Harkness knew he had been part of the problem, and it only worsened his guilt the more he learned of her past. He had told himself to do better; he would show her that he could.

Drowsiness finally descended on him as his eyelids grew heavy. Despite his seat on the hard and dusty floor, there was something comfortable about their current positions and nearness. He watched her for a few moments more in the dim lighting, forming none of it into intelligible thought as he took in the subtle flutter of her lashes and the steady pulse of the vein in her neck. Then, with his processes winding down one by one, his fingers intertwined with hers to rest on the cushion between them.

They slept this way as dawn broke the sky, the shrouds of human and machine entangled at their seams.

x-x-x-x-x

Harkness waited outside Dukov's Place under the blistering afternoon heat. He wiped at the perspiration gathering on his face shield and lifted it as he pulled on the strap of his helmet. The red-stained gauze around his arm tightened over his stitches during the movement, and he endured the stinging sensation while a merciful breeze blew by. He had no idea how much longer Raine would take to wake up, but when given the choice to either contend with the sun or suffocate in that reeking mansion, he preferred to roast outdoors.

Fortunately, a familiar set of footsteps sounded from inside. Harkness looked up from his spot next to the sandbag fortifications in front of the entrance. A few seconds later, the doors flew open as Raine marched out and squinted against the brightness.

"Everything all right?" Harkness asked her, noticing her stiff gait as she approached him.

She scowled and adjusted her pack over her shoulders. "Yeah. Almost tripped over a pile of naked people sleeping off their orgy, but at least Dukov didn't try to bitch at me for staying past check-out time. Definitely not in the mood to deal with that perv."

Harkness walked with her as she set the course north. "You seem like you're having some trouble there," he said, pointing to her short, trudging strides.

"It's nothing, just sore muscles. I tried stretching as soon as I woke up, but I guess I'm more out of shape than I thought," she replied while tucking her bangs inside her recon helmet. "Damn, it's hot out today, too."

He examined the loosened straps of her pack, which allowed it to hang lower on her back. "How are your wounds doing?"

Raine waved off his concern even as her teeth clenched when her assault rifle accidentally grazed them. "Should be fine. I shot myself up with another stimpak earlier. What about your arm? Still out of order?"

"I'm estimating it to be usable again by this evening."

"Good. Because that's when I plan to hit Paradise Falls."

He cast a dubious gaze over the slashes in her recon armor. "Will you be okay for combat? We still need to get you a new set of armor—"

She made a frustrated noise and glared at him. " _Yes_ , all right? Seriously, quit fussing over me like that. You really are starting to sound like my dad."

Harkness frowned, deeply repelled by the idea. A long bout of silence stretched between them as they neared the end of the downtown area. He glanced at her again after a while, observing the stormy shade in her expression.

"By the way, I know this is very belated, but I'm sorry about your father," he told her. "Dr. Sinclair did a lot of good for the Capital."

Raine tensed and shot him an indiscernible look before facing forward again. "Yeah. For the Capital," she uttered in a low, bitter tone.

He left the subject at that, recognizing another can of worms he would rather not open.

They ambled along the route next to the river, avoiding several known raider camps she tracked on her Pip-Boy map. Harkness scanned their surroundings every few minutes, both to watch for enemies and to update his topographical data on the Wasteland. He hadn't journeyed this far up the grid since hiding out with the Railroad during his early months as a fugitive android in the Capital. Although not much in the environment had changed over the past several years, he sensed a certain alteration in the overall atmosphere.

In the following hours, Raine spotted and picked up a few more pieces of shiny silver hardware left lying in mile-long increments on the ground. She quickened their pace a little more each time she found one, her confidence and recklessness growing despite his reminders to maintain a level head. The untreated wounds on her back had started bleeding again from rubbing against her pack straps, but she paid no heed to any discomfort they caused, for Bryan remained her top priority whenever she spoke.

Harkness noted the fierce determination she exhibited, glad that she cared for the boy to this degree, but also taken aback by her anxiety. He knew she had been the one to rescue Bryan from Grayditch and escort him to Rivet City the previous year, but given her history of solitude and apparent misanthropy, he hadn't predicted a reaction this strong coming from her. Even now, right after he had suggested for them to take a water break, she merely pulled out a bottle of purified water and chugged a third of it before holding it out to him, still walking.

He accepted the water and eyed her in displeasure. "You're going to use up all your energy if you don't stop to take at least a short rest."

Raine's face hardened. "We're already half a day behind. We have to catch up before something happens to Bryan."

Harkness downed the rest of the water and tossed the empty bottle into a dilapidated garbage bin they passed by. "That's what you've been saying for the past three hours. I understand that we need to find him as soon as possible, but—"

"You don't get it. If something happens to that kid, I'm not sure I'll be able to live with myself," she declared, sight trained straight ahead. "I don't even really like children. But Bryan's different."

"Yeah, I did get the feeling you weren't too fond of them," Harkness commented as James Hargrave and C.J. Young came to mind.

She peered sideways at him, seeming to read his thoughts. "What, you still think I chased out those two rugrats from Rivet City on purpose?"

"I haven't heard a different version of the story yet."

"Look, all I did was tell the Hargrave kid to straighten the fuck up before he grew up to be a worthless delinquent with nothing more than an attitude problem and a broken home sob story to his name," Raine huffed, clearly referring to someone specific. "Kids with shitty parents need tough love early on, or they'll end up the same way. I didn't think he'd run off like a little wuss or take C.J. with him, though. Guess the brat couldn't handle hearing it straight."

Harkness stared at her as they passed through the Bethesda ruins. "That was it? When the truth was that simple, you could have set the record straight with me a long time ago."

Raine sent him a dubious glance. "You sure about that?"

He thought about it again and grimaced. "I suppose I may have been less approachable at the time," he admitted.

"Understatement of the century, Chief," she said wryly. "But I was responsible, so I brought them back. Just like I'm responsible for Bryan getting kidnapped if Sister really did snatch him to get back at me."

Harkness drew his eyebrows together in consternation and took bigger steps as they waded through a field of thick brush. "You know Sister's actions aren't your fault."

"Maybe, but it's a domino effect, and the chain of events traces back to me," Raine contended, sounding grim. "I've already got a lot to live with. I don't want to add Bryan's life to that list."

The conversation ended there as Harkness processed her words. The extent to which she held herself accountable for situations hardly in her control perplexed him. He started to see the pattern at work here, her tendency to accept blame and denunciation even when the verities told a different tale. From what he had gathered thus far, she had been the one victimized and mistreated, which made her resulting cagey personality understandable. So why did she punish herself further by allowing others to believe she was the scourge of the Wastes?

He recalled her sleep-talking, the content of which hinted at her genuine remorse over her own misdeeds. But which misdeeds were true and which were false? His desire to know clashed with his promise to leave her history alone. He glimpsed her now, the living enigma, always mystifying him more with every layer he managed to peel away.

It didn't escape him that his focus had once again gone from the task at hand to Raine Sinclair. He couldn't provide a conscious explanation for this recurring development, especially for a man of his position, so fixated on a hard-bitten young woman. Even if he tried to rely on his human memory chip, it provided no insight. She operated on a different level from everyone else. He acknowledged his own incessant wish to comprehend her.

He refused to answer why.

They traveled without incident for another few hours, stopping once at his insistence to take a proper break. He checked on his arm while she forced herself to eat a mutfruit, testing the healing muscles and pleased to see the rapid improvements. Once they resumed their trek, the sun had set below the horizon, and the sky took on hues of orange above them. At different points, they encountered a yao guai and a group of mole rats, all easily felled by Harkness's one-handed shooting and Raine's less impressive scatter shots.

Around the time dusk gave way to evening, they reached the Meresti trainyard, where they spotted a camp of dead bandits situated behind one set of tracks. Harkness stopped Raine when he noticed two sets of familiar crates next to the bodies. Venturing closer, he identified the Aqua Pura label on the empty water bottles strewn around them.

“Oh, damn. One of the groups that’s been stealing Rivet City’s shipments?” Raine questioned as she stood next to Harkness to survey the litter and corpses.

He bent down and inspected one body, determining the time of death to be recent. “Officer Lepelletier has suspected that these bandits are carrying out organized attacks rather than random ones. We still haven’t been able to lock onto the pattern, though.” A quick scan over the area gave him pause. “What I’m wondering is what killed this group here. No injuries or physical trauma. No significant trace of chems. No internal damage. Looks like they were hydrated, but it’s as if their bodies just shut down for no reason.”

“Maybe they drowned in their own karma.” Raine shrugged and started walking away. “Well, that’s one less group we have to worry about,” she remarked, readjusting her pack. “We should keep moving.”

Harkness straightened and followed her, filing away the discovery for further examination at a later date. He began to see the full benefits of this excursion; aside from their primary objective, it gave him the opportunity to learn of certain situations out here that directly affected Rivet City. Only now did it dawn on him how reclusive their community really was, with news traveling in and out at insufficient rates. Perhaps once they started on the recruitment process, he could restructure the entire security force to spread out over the outlying areas. Although it would be months before that became a feasible goal, he kept it in mind, realizing the necessity of change.

As they wandered past the metro access door, Harkness noticed an increase in Raine’s fidgeting, as well as the tight expression she tried to disguise.

“Hey. Are you okay?” he asked her.

“Yeah, why?”

“You seem like you’re in pain,” he stated, reaching out to grasp her pack and pull her toward him. “You keep shifting this thing…” The rest of his sentence trailed off when he saw the large bloodstains that covered the side of the burlap that had been pressed against her back. “Raine.”

She hissed when he pressed tentative fingers around her wounds. “Ow, what the hell are you doing?”

Harkness grasped the material of her recon armor and peeled it away, jaw tightening when the angry red gashes came into view. “They’re infected. You even had your pack scraping against them for most of the day. This is why we should have dressed them last night instead of you relying on stimpaks.”

She wrenched herself free and snapped, “It’ll be fine, all right? I’ll stave off the worst of it with Med-X or something and get Preston to fix them up once we get back to Rivet City.”

“No. We’re taking care of this now before it gets worse,” Harkness declared, holding her pack away when she tried to grab it.

“Lay off. I don’t need them dressed.”

“Exactly _why_ are you being so stubborn about this?”

Raine glowered at him, but a wavering quality entered her eyes. “Why do you think? Because it’s… awkward,” she finished feebly, averting her gaze.

Harkness froze, considering that. “Awkward?”

A faint flush crept up her cheeks. “You’ve already had to babysit me when I was a hallucinating wreck. You don’t need to patch me up, too.”

“It’s not a problem.”

“It’s… uncomfortable for me,” she confessed, looking at everything but him as her anger dissipated. “I already have issues with people physically touching my bare skin, but you’re…”

Comprehension hit. “…The stern security chief you still kind of hate?” he guessed.

She shook her head and sent him a sideways look that roved over his body. “A man.”

Even though her discomfort showed clear as day, something about the way she said that struck an odd chord in him. He noted the rise in her body temperature, the difficulty she had in maintaining eye contact with him. His stance relaxed as he witnessed, much to his astonishment, her bashful demeanor.

“I won’t do anything inappropriate. I promise you,” Harkness told her, his countenance softening. “But we really do need to get those wounds taken care of before they worsen.”

Raine peered up at him for a long while, her deep blue eyes searching his before she sighed in resignation. “All right.”

They set up behind one of the train cars next to a large rock formation. After building a small fire to provide as their light source, Harkness laid out the first aid items on top of a spare towel and sanitized his hands with vodka they had pilfered from Dukov’s Place. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Raine remove her recon helmet and armor top, catching the bloodstain that took up half of her white undershirt. Although she sat with her back to him, his first aid preparations stilled when she slid the shirt over her head.

The firelight tinged the pale skin of her back and shoulders with orange warmth, and her long black hair fluttered free in the slight breeze. A few old scars surrounded the infected gashes across her spine, symbols of her history as a fighter with a body count under her belt. She gathered her hair in her hands and moved it over one shoulder, exposing the slender nape of her neck. For all his reliance on computations and logic, he had nothing when faced with the vision across the fire.

Raine turned to stare at him over her shoulder after waiting for nearly a minute of silence. “Well, shit. Take a picture. They make them like this up at the Commonwealth?”

Harkness broke out of his reverie and brought the towel of items over to her. _They don’t even come close,_ he thought, kneeling down behind her. Out loud, he said, “All right, hold still. This is going to sting.”

She rotated back to the front and hugged her knees in anticipation. “Great. Just what I— _ow. Fuck_ ,” she gasped when he pressed a vodka-soaked cloth to her back. “That hurts like a bitch.”

“It would have hurt less if you hadn’t waited this long.”

“Yeah, yeah, spare me the lecture. Argh, God. It feels like you’re lighting me on fire.”

“Had I been a lesser person, there would have been an innuendo somewhere in there.”

Raine shifted her gaze back to him, eyebrows raised. “Really? You only make jokes now when you’re scraping my soul away with that cloth? Ow. Maybe I should have chosen death after all.”

“I’m sure Bryan would prefer you alive,” Harkness remarked as he wiped the dried blood from her skin. “And for the record, so do I.”

She went quiet for a few moments, looking at the ground in front of her. “Yeah. Sometimes I wonder if the Capital would’ve been better off if I had jumped, though.”

Harkness stopped, eyes narrowing at the back of her head. “That’s really not something you should think about.”

“But it’s not something I can forget. Lopez took my place. I’m always going to remember.”

His hand on her shoulder blade tightened ever so slightly. “He tried to free you.”

Raine touched her forehead to her knees. “Right. He tried. But it only broke my side of the pact.”

“What do you mean?” Harkness inquired even though he knew he was delving into her background again. When curiosity stirred, it never settled beneath the surface. “What pact?”

She lifted her head and turned to send him a tortured glance. “The suicide pact.”

x-x-x-x-x

Those words lingered in his head, seeping through to his subconscious, echoing louder and louder until his eyes snapped open.

The night sky of the Wasteland greeted him, a canvas of black and sapphire littered with flickering stars. He lay there for a moment, merely watching the dark heavens, reminded of a certain pair of eyes that bore the same features. The crisp, cool air clung to his skin in the absence of the fire, which had died down some time ago. He worked to push himself into a sitting position, only to find that his good arm had fallen asleep, and his mended one confirmed a permanent alteration in its muscle memory.

He guessed no more than two hours had passed since he had managed to convince his feisty companion to allow herself a brief shut-eye. His weariness must have caught up to him as well because he drifted off soon after. When he moved to rouse her, however, his gaze landed on the empty spot next to her belongings.

“Raine?”


End file.
